Sous le Ciel Blue, 2016

Nina Khemchyan  

Khemchyan's sculptures bear the imprint of a slow, sedimented temporality. Closed-eyed faces, clasp hands, archaic silhouettes, and geometric or vegetal signs seem to surface from the clay like fragments of distant narratives. These figures do not present themselves as fixed identities but as survivors—forms that cross cultures and epochs, reactivating dormant imaginaries within the present. Previously marked by a restrained, almost ascetic minimalism, Khemchyan's work now turns decisively toward color. Her long-standing investigation of the tension between shadow and light expands into a vibrant chromatic register. This shift, already perceptible in her 2024 Venice Biennale project, reads less as a rupture than as a necessary unfolding—an affirmative response to contemporary conditions, an Ode to Joy, an insistence on vitality. In Khemchyan's work, color does not adorn form; it inhabits it. It constitutes its inner charge. Gold, platinum, deep blues, mineral reds, chalky whites, and mutated oxides establish distinct regimes of light across the surface. Polychromy operates as a kind of breath within the sculpture, articulating relief, tension, and zones of tranquility.