Lauren Mackler on Aram Saroyan - Artforum

January 5 - February 22, 2020

Opening Reception:

Sunday, January 5, 2-5 pm

For those who know Aram Saroyan’s minimal poems, these recent drawings may arrive as a complete surprise. But in fact they represent a late flowering of a lifelong exploration of line released from the constrictions of the typewriter. In these new drawings, the early minimalist poems give way to something wordless: In an artistic lineage that ranges from Paul Klee to Bradley Walker Tomlin to Brice Marden, the new works, like the iconic minimalist poems, bristle with Saroyan’s signature sense of exuberant discovery.

Saroyan’s work has appeared in numerous recent exhibitions, including “Whorled Explorations,” the 2014 Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kochi, India; “Three Day Weekend: Three Way Weekend” (2015) organized by Dave Muller at Blum and Poe, Los Angeles; the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A. 2016: a, the, though, only” (for which he provided the subtitle); and “And Per Se And” (2016), organized by Michael Ned Holte at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles.

Michael Ned Holte is a writer and independent curator based in Los Angeles, and a member of the faculty in the Program in Art at CalArts. His exhibitions include “Routine Pleasures” at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture at the Schindler House and “Made in L.A. 2014” (with Connie Butler) at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

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