Peter Sarkisian

Biography

Peter Sarkisian (b.1965 ) from Glendale California studied at the California Institute of the Art. His multi-media installations lie at the intersection of film, video, and sculpture. He began his career as a filmmaker,and in 1994, shifted to video projection to create a hybrid form of video object that challenges the moving image, as well as its standardized format.The result is a richly textured art that engages the anxiety between the tangible and the illusive.

 

For nearly fifteen years Peter Sarkisian has explored the spatial vernacular of video projection, creating installations that question the role of video by engaging the viewer in unique tactile experiences. With his latest work, the artist pushes the medium further still, using cutting-edge 3D engineering and new materials to literally wrap his images in surface. The result is a series of dimensional installations that, once and for all, defy categorization. Both object and image, static and moving, Peter Sarkisian’s latest work places video in an exciting new context.

 

Sarkisian's work contains a degree of illusionism so high that it verges on the surreal. Indeed, he is well aware that video and moving photographic imagery inevitably engage the surreal; that once a thing's liability to the logical world is taken away, what is left can only exist outside of the realm of reality. "When used in this way, video causes the world to behave in ways it shouldn't," he says, "It offers a versionof our world that often causes our sense of what's right and real to twist and distort. This allows for the creation of perceptually confusing moments, which is what I’m trying to create in order to pull the viewer’s experience back out of video and into the real world”.

Solo Exhibition

2011: Peter Sarkisian: Video Works, 1996 – 2008, the Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville,Tenn

2010: New Work, James Kelly Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

         Peter Sarkisian: Video Works, 1996 - 2008, The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

2008: Peter Sarkisian. Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA (Curated by DanCameron)

         Peter Sarkisian: Extruded Video Engine #2, St. Petersburg Museum of Art, St.Petersburg,          FL

2007: Peter Sarkisian, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL

2005: Double Feature:Steve McQueen and Peter Sarkisian, (paired solo shows) San Francisco          Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA 

2004: Manifold, Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL

2003: Bohr’s Atom,I-20 Gallery, NY

         Peter Sarkisian: Dusted, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS

         Twelve Minutes Flat, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Galisteo, NM

2002: Peter Sarkisian – Dusted. Curated by Valerie Olson. The Glassell School of          Art,the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX (cat.)

2001: Peter Sarkisian. Curated by Louis Grachos. Kansas City Jewish Museum, Kansas City,          MO

         Strand, I-20Gallery, NY

         Perspectives, la Foire Internaional d’art Contemporaian (FIAC) 2000, Paris,France

2000: Sarkisian, Musée Picasso Antibes, France. (Curated by Thierry Davila) (cat.)

1999: Dusted, Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh International Festival, Scotland, United         Kingdom

        Peter Sarkisian, The Maschinenhalle at Brandenburgischer Kunstverein,         Potsdam,Germany

        Peter Sarkisian: Rare Drop, The Woodstreet Galleries at the Pittsburgh CulturalTrust,         Pittsburgh, PA

1998: Dusted, Art Forum Berlin (I-20), Berlin, Germany

         Dusted,University Art Gallery, University of California, San Diego, San Diego, CA

1997: Signification, Linda Durham Contemporary Art, Galisteo, NM

         Peter Sarkisian: New Project, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (Curated by Louis Grachos)

         Signification, Linda Durham Gallery, Santa Fe, NM

         Peter Sarkisian, Modernism, San Francisco, CA

1996: Project show, Bravin Post Lee Gallery, NY

1995: Peter Sarkisian,Off-Site, Santa Fe, NM

Collection

San Francisco Museumof Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY
Fisher Landau Center, Brooklyn, NY
St. Petersburg Museum, St. Petersburg, FL
Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, KS
Kemper Art Museum, Kansas City, KS
Kumamoto Museum of Contemporary Art, Kumamoto, Japan.
Delta Dairy, City, Greece
Mitchell, Silberg and Knupp, Los Angeles, CA
The Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
The West Collection, PA
Commerce Bank