ZADIK ZADIKIAN
ZADIK ZADIKIAN
Born in 1948 in Erevan, Soviet Armenia. At the age of 15 entered the Art Academy of Erevan. As an outstanding student he exhibited his sculptures in the museums of contemporary art in Erevan and Moscow. At the age of 19 he made a life-daring escape by swimming across the Arax River in freezing winter, amid machine-gun bullets and border guard dogs, and made his way to America. In 1969 he arrived in San Francisco where he met and became assistant to the sculptor Benjamino Bufano, friend of Brancusi, who was making large-scale commissions for public spaces. He was greatly influenced by Bufano's productivity and under his influence developed a keen sense for scale, color and the discipline of work.
In 1974 he moved to New York City, became friends with Richard Serra and assisted him in producing many of the huge black oil-stick wall drawings. The first of these was named after Zadikian.
Both the physical and cultural life of New York had a profound affect on him. Amid the diversity and poverty of possibilities (with his concept for chaos, decay and angst) heroically he strove to establish a unique identity of his own. In 1976 he covered his entire home and studio, 10,000 square feet of walls, floor and ceiling, with industrial gold by pounding and gilding so as the uniformly transform it into a singularly radiant vision.
A predilection for the magic and majesty of gold leaf led to the 1978 project, 1000 Bricks of Gilded in 22 Carat Gold Leaf. The 1979 Tigran head reliefs, also gilded, were followed in 1980 by Tigran fragments, where the partial remnants of the ancient king are presented in relics of splendor. These auric works recreated worlds beyond the realm of everyday thought, bordering on the threshold of the timeless and the eternal.
His concerns in art are the heroic and archaic the nobility of ancient kings and symbols. Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian and Hellenistic cultures are renewed in relief with a tremendous force and modeled with love in an exquisitely classical style. Unleashing the power of the sacrificial symbol, or with the majestic and gilded profile of a Ptolemaic ruler, his art re-asserts the need of a golden heritage in a contemporary culture.
Casitas
2011
Gold Leaf on Resin
