A Dragon 2007

This mixed-media piece, "A Dragon" by Vigen Vartanov is made from wood, metal, and paint, cobbled together as a hanging assemblage. I’m thinking about the story it might tell. Was it rescued, was it found? He might have been thinking about the things he could recover or reclaim, from a past perhaps almost forgotten. What he might have been thinking when he made it? How these collected fragments and materials— the aged wood, the rusted metal, the faded paint — could come together to create something new and vital? There is a certain freedom in that: not starting with a blank slate, but with the imperfections and irregularities of the discarded. It’s a bit like life, isn’t it? It’s how we build upon what already exists, remixing and reinterpreting, in an ongoing conversation across time.