ROMANCING THE STONE
Al-Ahram Weekly, Egypt
November 27, 2013
The recent winner of the Presidential Medal of the Italian Republic,
sculptor Armen Agop tells Reham El-Adawi about his work and what he
aspires to
The ancient civilisations of Italy and Egypt have provided a backdrop
for the development of Armen Agop’s work. “Just as Egypt was a good
place for a sculptor to be born, Italy,” he says, “is a very good place
for a sculptor to live.” His sculptures are ascetic in form and rich in
spirituality; pure shapes, defined by strong lines out of which other
figuration is excluded, leaving you with the bare essentials. Tracing
Agop’s entire oeuvre, it is clear that black granite is the material
dearest to his heart: “In Pietrasanta, I tried to carve marble but
I didn’t feel it the way I do with granite which is a very neutral
material that is beautiful and sweet at the same time,” he explained.
The Egyptian-Armenian sculptor celebrated winning the Presidential
Medal of the Italian Republic last month at the closing ceremony of
the 40th round of the Sulmona Prize for Contemporary Art in Sulmona,
Italy; just one more award to be added to his pile of honours. The
exhibition opened on 7 September with 125 artworks representing over
20 nations, all displayed in the civic museums of diocesan Sulmona.
According to Agop, “the Sulmona Art Prize is a prestigious award that
has been in existence for 40 years, one of the oldest in Italy. The
list of jurors includes some of the most prominent art critics in
Italy.” Organised by the Circle of Art and Culture “Il Quadrivio”
(The Crossroads), the 40th round had a particularly impressive jury
chaired by Vittorio Sgarbi: Ivo Bonitatibus, Ennio Calabria, Carlo
Fabrizio Carli, Toti Carpenters, Giorgio Di Genova, Massimo Pasqualone,
Giorgio Seveso, Chiara Strozzieri and Duccio Trombadori.
Born to Armenian-Egyptian parents in Cairo in 1969, Agop graduated
from the sculpture department of the Faculty of Fine Arts, Helwan
University, Cairo, Egypt (1987-1992), before which he was apprenticed
at the studio of the painter Simon Shahrigian (1982-1987). From 1997 to
2000, he was granted on an Assistant Researcher scholarship, teaching
at the Faculty of the Fine Arts. He first arrived in Italy in 2000
after winning the Prix de Rome. He felt at home in the ancient city
but also recognised the cultural heritage of Pietrasanta, a mecca for
sculptors worldwide since Michelangelo built the roads for extracting
marble from the local mountains. The town gained in popularity in the
20th century when world renowned artists like Henry Moore and Isamu
Noguchi made their stone sculptures there. Today it has seen work by
Damian Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Marc Quinn and many others… But Agop’s
story began long before he saw it.
“I think my interest in art started like many kids with drawing,
because that’s the most available when you are a child. The difference
is that I never found a good reason to stop. The chance to make
sculptures came later. I remember I was 15 and I was visiting the
studio of two friends who were students of fine arts and they had clay
in their studio. I just couldn’t leave without a piece of clay.” He has
this to say about the connection with ancient Egyptian art, which he
says with complete conviction and without thinking: “Simple, granite,
eternal, internal energy and stretched surface… Art in ancient
Egyptian civilisations wasn’t concerned with imitating nature, it
was more concerned with creating a strong presence; sculptures with
a strong presence embodied a perfect shape the divinity of the gods.
Simple forms contoured by a very strong line defining a shape (volume)
firmly from the surrounding space, almost giving up the outside world
preferring to its relations with its own self…” The same is true of
Agop’s contemporary sculptures, which seem abstract at the first glance
because they don’t make you recall something you know or recognise,
but soon you realise they are real strong presences, like cosmic signs.
Agop decided to settle down in Italy after wining the State Prize
of Artistic Creativity: The Rome Prize. “I spent over a year working
in Italy, between Rome and Pietrasanta. Near the end of 2001, I was
invited to exhibit in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome. The
work was well received by the curators, and at the same time I received
the second prize for sculpture in the Florence Biennale.” It was then
that he began to think about continuing to work in Italy, a decision
that was made easier by offers to show in galleries. Around that
same time he was invited to the International Sculpture Symposium of
Comblain-au-pont in Belgium for 2002. “The Rome Prize, has had the
biggest impact on my life because it opened many doors and introduced
my work throughout Europe,” he pointed out.
In 2010, he received the international Umberto Mastroianni award in
Piemonte, where he won the coveted prize for his monumental fountain.
“I was very glad to be invited to the seventh Biennale Internazionale
di Scultura della Regione Piemonte; from the biennale, a jury selected
the winning project, and honestly I wasn’t expecting that my project
would be selected. This is because of the long history and heritage
of fountains in Italy, and my very serene and sober design, I thought
it would be too Sufi for the Italian taste but I did what I wanted
anyway and it was received very well. It wasn’t only selected by the
jury but was then voted by the residents too. The significance of
this award for me is of carving a fountain sculpture in Italy which
has the most famous fountains in the world,” he says.
Agop’s participation in international biennales and symposia is not
confined to Italy, however. In 2006 when the Coral Spring Museum of
Art in Florida decided to make a sculpture park, they invited five
sculptors to represent five continents; Agop was invited to represent
Africa. In 2008, he was awarded the KKV Bohuslan Stone Grant in Sweden,
“the sculpture grant” given once a year to a prominent international
sculptor by the Swedish organisation KKV in Bohuslan, which chooses
one sculptor every year from all over the world. He is also proud
of participating in the Aswan International Sculpture Symposium
(AISS) in 2000, when he carved a rose granite sculpture inspired by
an organic form flying in the air, currently on show at the Aswan
Open-Air Museum. He had been part of the symposium since 1998,
when he participated in the symposium’s first workshop for younger
artists. Agop is concerned with the present conditions of sculpture
in Egypt and has suggestions that can help to improve the situation.
He believes that the 1980s was the beginning of the deterioration of
the sculpture department in the Faculty of Fine Arts because students
who used to enrol to the department were those who failed to join
the painting or architecture departments and that 99 per cent of
the faculty students are not talented and have nothing to do with
art whatsoever but their secondary education marks stopped them from
going to a faculty of their choice. “Joining any faculty of art must
be based on talent and designing a comprehensive interview for the
applicants would help, so would making it a requirement for them to
pass a practical and theoretical entry exam,” Agop says.
“It is shameful that a country like Egypt which possesses such a
number of graceful Pharaonic sculptures and is known to all the
European sculptors as the cradle of that art – for instance, at the
Louvre the ancient Egyptian section is the first – should be without
a sculpture department in most of its faculties and universities. The
Egyptian Ministry of Culture should support emerging sculptors and
provide them with studios in appropriate places where they can freely
break their stones and use their machines and tools without fear of
disturbing the neighbours; it should subsidise the tools and materials
they need for their creativity.” Agop called for reviving the old idea
of the Luxor Marsam (or Studio), a sort of an artists’ residence for
three months; the artist stays there at the expense of the state to
create a piece of art. Agop feels, however, this should take place
all across Egypt and not just in Luxor. He also suggested spreading
a project like the AISS in a large number of Egypt’s governorates,
increasing the number of galleries that are designed particularly to
show sculpture and trying to raise public awareness of that art.
Armen Agop’s works are on permanent show at the Egyptian Modern Art
Museum, Egypt, the Aswan Open-Air Museum, the Mathaf Arab Museum of
Modern Art, Qatar, Villa Empain/Boghossian Foundation in Belgium, the
Giardino di Piazza Stazione in Barge, Italy, the Coral Springs Museum
of Art in Florida, USA and the Bozzetti Museum in Pietrasanta, Italy.
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