Asbarez: Zadik Zadikian to Represent Armenian Pavilion at 61st Annual Venice B

Zadik Zadikian

BY ALEJANDRO JASSAN

VENICE — The Republic of Armenia presents The Studio, a solo project by artist Zadik Zadikian, for the Pavilion of the Republic of Armenia at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. The project is co-curated by legendary art dealer Tony Shafrazi, whose decades-long relationship and close collaboration with Zadikian shape the conceptual framework of the Pavilion, alongside Boston-based curator and cultural strategist Tina Chakarian, who has played a central role in advancing Armenia’s presence at La Biennale di Venezia since 2015 as Commissioner and Development Director of the Armenian Pavilion. On view from May 9 through November 22, the Pavilion reimagines the exhibition space as a living studio—an active site of production, transformation, and renewal that unfolds over the full duration of La Biennale di Venezia.

This presentation marks the continuation of Shafrazi and Zadikian’s decades-long collaboration, which began in the late 1970s with Zadikian’s first solo exhibition in Tehran at Shafrazi’s then-new eponymous gallery, just weeks before the fall of Iran’s ruling shah and on the cusp of the profound political and social transformations that would follow. At that time, a young Zadikian observed laborers carefully stacking clay bricks to dry in the open air at a facility nearly 200 miles from Tehran. “I was completely taken by the way they were making sculptures without knowing what they were doing,” he recalls. Ever since, the brick has become a central material and conceptual anchor in his work, continuing to inform Zadikian’s sustained engagement with repetition, labor, and the transformation of basic forms into complex structures.

In Venice, Zadikian will operate a fully functioning studio, in which objects—principally plaster bricks of varying scales and pigments—are formed, cast, and assembled by the artist and his studio assistants over the course of the exhibition. Each composite form is built by stacking multiple individual bricks of different sizes that remain separate and movable, allowing the arrangement to change and develop over time. This emphasis on repetition and physical presence places the project in dialogue with early modernist and post-Minimalist sculpture, recalling the work of Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, and Carl Andre, and reflecting a shared inquiry by both Zadikian and Shafrazi into form and the experience of space.

Aptly titled “The Studio”, the installation invites visitors to witness and engage directly with Zadikian’s process and materials, allowing the work to unfold in real time. By making production visible, the project challenges the often ritualized and private conventions of the artist’s studio, reframing it instead as a site of openness, exchange, and collective labor. In this way, “The Studio” recalls the legacy of Pop Art’s factories and ateliers—most notably Andy Warhol’s Factory—while emphasizing sustained, hands-on production over spectacle. As critic Carlo McCormack observes, “’The Studio’, for Zadikian, is workroom, factory, and laboratory at once—a locus of constant production, invention, and reinvention, a place of infinite possibility where art is not simply what is made; it is the study of its creation, and what we make of it.”

Furthermore, Chakarian’s longstanding engagement with Armenia’s cultural infrastructure—both within the Republic and across its global diaspora—inflects the Pavilion with a broader commitment to visibility, continuity, and international dialogue. Since 2015, as Commissioner and Development Director of the Armenian Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, she has played a central role in shaping Armenia’s sustained presence on this global stage, overseeing curatorial development, institutional partnerships, and strategic fundraising efforts. Her work bridges generations of artists working in Yerevan and abroad, positioning Armenian contemporary art within an expansive transnational discourse while honoring its distinct historical and cultural narratives.

“The Studio” will be located within the Arsenale Militare, a vast complex of shipyards and armories that for over 900 years served as the heart of Venetian naval power. Over the course of La Biennale di Venezia, hundreds of plaster bricks will be cast, stacked, disassembled, and reassembled within the Pavilion, allowing the installation to evolve continuously through ongoing production. Here, process is neither theatricalized nor concealed. As McCormack states, “the act of making is not staged, but neither is it hidden.”

The Venice presentation follows Zadikian’s recent inclusion in a major group exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, “Solid Gold” (November 16, 2024–July 6, 2025), where his work “Path to Nine” (2024) took the form of a luminous wall composed of 999 gold leaf–covered bars, extending his long-standing engagement with modularity, material transformation, and symbolic value.

Zadik Zadikian (b. 1948, Erevan, Soviet Armenia) has spent over five decades creating works that challenge both the materials and ideologies of contemporary art. A daring escape from the Soviet Union in his youth marked the beginning of an extraordinary journey, from his training under Benjamino Bufano to his longstanding friendship with Richard Serra. Zadikian’s work, particularly his exploration of gilded forms, has established him as one of the leading sculptors in the realm of contemporary alchemy. His pieces, often crafted from gold leaf, suggest a transcendence of time and place, pushing boundaries while creating worlds that seem to belong to another realm entirely.

Learn more about the exhibition at the 2026 Armenian Pavilion website.

—