source: amandacharchian

I am Amanda Charchian.
I currently live and work in Los Angeles.
I aim to investigate the state of alienation through realms of the physical, psycho-social and spiritual human condition. Employing 2D and 3D mediums to transmit mystical experience into matter, my art practice is a means of communicating the subconscious sphere into objects; creating possible portals to ascend beyond known reality.

My work has been featured in numerous publications such as Vogue (Spain), VICE Magazine, Bullet Magazine, Oyster (Australia), CR Fashion Book, Black Magazine (ZN), If You Leave, The Infinity Journal, Autre, Sciences Occultes (France), Lone Wolf and Supplementaire (UK).

Six of my photographs won Honorable Mentions in 2012’s International Photography Awards.

Music Clients include: Tamaryn (Mexican Summer), Allah Las (Innovative Leisure), Boardwalk (Stones Throw Records), The Entrance Band, Locust (Editions Mego)
Fashion Clients include: The Reformation, Littledoe Accessories, Sister Jane, Timeless Vixen Vintage

Education

2010 BFA, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA.
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source: dailytargum

By nature, art exists in many overlapping realms. For Los Angeles artist Amanda Charchian, it exists in a realm entirely unto itself. Charchian’s art does not only bridge the gap between real world issues and abstract concepts, but the uses of popular mediums as well. From her marble paintings to her psychedelic photography, Charchian introduces viewers to an art form that is entirely her own.

Los Angeles-based artist Amanda Charchian is introducing us to the world as seen through her lens. With influences ranging from deep, entangled philosophies to life in Los Angeles to the role of the Middle Eastern woman, her work is truly multi-dimensional.

A theme of alienation in her paintings brings us back to the ’60s Pop Art movement, while her on-the-ground footage brings the viewer very much into the present moment as captured by her camera. Her subjects are visceral, human and celebratory, despite sometimes deriving from a very dark place in the human consciousness.
“My art exists between worlds,” Charchian said. “My practice is to extract from the immaterial world of dreams, the subconscious, the mysterious, the abstract and infuse it into matter.” Charchian views her art as a portal for transitioning between worlds. By taking into account light, space, psyche and atmosphere first, she is able to create illusions that appeal to the imagination first, the senses second and logic last.

“Perhaps I’m just an escapist,” she said, “or perhaps it’s just more fun to be disoriented from the banal modern world.”
Instead of merely creating a new fantasy world of her own, she uses situations and people from reality to comment on the paradoxically surreal nature of the human condition. A photo series of hers, called Black Hole/Ball and Chain, captures the excess of the pharmaceutical world. Charchian features models surrounded by spilled pill capsules, looking lifeless and limp. The photos are in high resolution and the scenes are raw and slightly intrusive. “This is a staged photo shoot where I collected thousands of empty pill capsules and bottles from Craigslist and pharmaceutical companies,” Charchian explained.

The influence of the pharmaceutical industry is a major theme throughout Charchian’s work. Her acrylic painting on marble, Adderall, features a girl boxing at the same time that she takes a pull of her cigarette, demonstrating great focus and concentration. Charchian covered the entire marble slab with paint to draw the viewer into the scene. The Californian mid-century house and the grey tonal landscape give the painting a lonely atmosphere.

“My work is centered around the theme of alienation,” Charchian said, “While exploring the process of alienation through the work, the making of the work also becomes a coping mechanism for dealing with alienation.”
Another painting on marble titled Still Life explores alienation in a more unique setting. The painting features three girls in bikinis and heels; each is looking in the direction that their body is facing, and their gazes never meet. The balcony surface and sky are left in plain marble, with no paint. The textures of the black tree can only be seen under very particular light, contributing to the cold fragility that characterizes the scene’s atmosphere. The rooftops of Los Angeles are seen beyond the balcony, against a sky of marble. The disinterested, half-naked figures against the grey background emit the same sentiments of alienation that can be perceived in the Black Hole/Ball and Chain series and Adderall.

“I constructed [the painting] this way, as another comment on pharmaceutical spiritual sterility I experienced amongst my peers,” Charchian said, “Separated, distant and high on pills. This is the largest marble painting I did, as it measure 52 inches by 72 inches long and was shown at LA Contemporary Gallery.”

The use of marble as a canvas is unique to Charchian’s works. She said she began working on marble because she had always felt more comfortable in sculpting as opposed to painting. The physical heaviness of the marble and the natural ground of the marble slates allow Charchian to start in a good place when she begins a painting.
“Also,” Charchian adds, “I wanted to blur the lines between sculpture and painting a bit – as marble is traditionally used for sculpture.”

Her paintings are also reminiscent of David Hockney’s as well, who featured depictions of lonely ’60s British homes in his paintings to comment on the 1950s and ’60s sense of isolation.
In addition to her depictions of wasteland excess and alienation, Charchian also developed a fascination that runs deeper than pharmaceuticals. After her trip to Egypt, which she showcases in her series ∑G¥P†ÍÁN MÁGÍÇ, she began exploring the idea of female oppression and the human condition in greater detail. The series features delicate photos of Egyptian children, women in burkas and action shots on the streets of Egypt. Unlike her other photos which are fantastical and detached, the works in ∑G¥P†ÍÁN MÁGÍÇ are visceral and real.

This isn’t her first experience with Middle Eastern oppression, however. Charchian is first generation Iranian-American, from an Iranian-Jewish family that fled during the Iranian Revolution in 1979 to escape the oppression of women. The contrast between liberated and alienated subjects in her work is a product of the freedom she has as an artist in America as well as the personal struggles she is familiar with.
“My work is a celebration of freedom for women, although it is not categorically feminist. My mother was not able to be an artist growing up, because her society saw a female artist as synonymous with a whore. That clearly isn’t the case for me.” Many her of her photographs depict female nudes, reveling in the most liberated form of the human body. Additionally, one of the major images in her work is the word “YES”, deriving from one of her artistic influences, Yoko Ono.
“I became obsessed with the word and idea of ‘YES’ before I really researched her stance on it and clearly we come from a very similar place,” she said.

One of her most recent works, a crystal statue entitled The Initiate, shows the word “YES” in the very center of the shimmering rock. A similar photograph has Charchian herself looking into a heavily guarded mirror with “YES” painted on in black paint. The contrasting images of liberation in her nudes and restraint and oppression in ∑G¥P†ÍÁN MÁGÍÇ illustrate a conflict in the human condition that Charchian seeks to relieve through her artwork.

Her collections of psychedelic photographs, sparkling statues and striking marble paintings reinforce a flower-child spirit in Amanda Charchian’s art that allows her to stand apart from much of the art world today. So much of modern art is about being edgy, modern and different. For Charchian, it’s an organic process of spiritual exploration and observation.
“Understanding the universe is an exercise is understanding yourself,” Charchian says, “which for me occurs through magic, my art practice whose main aim is to manifest spirit into matter.”
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source: imageidvtw

美國攝影師 Amanda Charchian 以超現實的夢幻手法進行創作，她希望透過研究生理、心理、社會與精神的方式探討人類存在的精神疏離狀態。透過探索潛意識，她創造了溝通的窗口，進而超越已知的現實。她的作品已經在許多雜誌媒體曝光，她的六幅作品更在 2012 年時獲得 International Photography Awards 佳作！