Peter Sarkisian is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 video and multimedia artist

Multimedia artist

Multimedia artists are contemporary artists who use a wide range of media to communicate their art. Multimedia art includes, by definition, more than one medium, therefore multimedia artists use visual art in combination with sound art, moving images and other media...

 who lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe is the capital of the U.S. state of New Mexico. It is the fourth-largest city in the state and is the seat of . Santa Fe had a population of 67,947 in the 2010 census...

.

Sarkisian has exhibited in numerous museums throughout the world, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, the Picasso Museum

Château Grimaldi (Antibes)

The Château Grimaldi at Antibes is built upon the foundations of the ancient Greek town of Antipolis. Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France, on the Mediterranean Sea.-History:...

 in Antibes, France and the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

.

Overview

Peter Sarkisian's art lies at the intersection of film, video and sculpture. He began his career as a filmmaker in the late 1980s, studying direction at the California Institute of the Arts

California Institute of the Arts

The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the...

 and the American Film Institute

American Film Institute

The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...

 before working in the film industry in Los Angeles. By 1994 Sarkisian’s interests had grown to include video sculpture

Video sculpture

Video sculptures, a type of video installation, involve one or more video screens that spectators move among or stand in front of. Video sculptures formed of more than one screen may broadcast a single program or may simultaneously broadcast different interconnected sequences on several channels....

, and in 1996 he began working with video projection, producing a number of spatial installations in order to challenge the moving image, as well as its standardized format.

Sarkisian is known for producing multi-media installations that blur the line between what is tangible and what is imagined. His video installations are designed to create perceptual conflicts between image, contour and surface, thereby allowing the viewer to draw multiple visual conclusions while reconsidering the medium of video itself. The relationship between viewer and viewed, and ultimately the dynamic between the two, is the focal point of Sarkisian's art.

Exhibition Highlights & Major Works

In 1997 Sarkisian had his first solo museum exhibition at Site Santa Fe

Site Santa Fe

SITE Santa Fe is a non-profit contemporary arts organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since its founding, SITE Santa Fe has gained worldwide recognition through a series of biennial exhibitions that have featured numerous famous artists...

, in which curator Louis Grachos included an installation by Sarkisian with works by Bill Viola

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media...

, Gary Hill

Gary Hill

Gary Hill is an American artist who lives and works in Seattle, Washington.One of the pioneers of video art, Gary Hill has exhibited his video and video installations worldwide . He is represented by Donald Young Gallery of Chicago.An anthology on the work of Gary Hill by Robert C...

, Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler

Tony Oursler is a multimedia and installation artist.- Tapes, Installations: 1977-1989:Tony Oursler is known for his fractured-narrative handmade video tapes including The Loner, 1980 and EVOL 1984. These works involve elaborate sound tracks, painted sets, stop-action animation and optical special...

 and others. The piece exhibited, titled "I don’t want it; take it back", featured multiple projections of a large hand intertwined with a ball in physical space.

In 1998, Sarkisian premiered one of his seminal works, "Dusted", at I-20 Gallery in New York. In this piece, five conjoined projections unfold around the sides of a 33-inch cube, inside of which a man and woman appear to move slowly about. The opacity of the cube gradually yields to transparency as their bodies brush away a layer of soot from its inner surface, thereby revealing a murky view of the interior. This process in turn soils the figures inside and causes them to disappear proportionally.

In 1999 "Dusted’’ was shown at the Edinburgh College of Art

Edinburgh College of Art

Edinburgh College of Art is an art school in Edinburgh, Scotland, providing tertiary education in art and design disciplines for over two thousand students....

 as part of the Edinburgh International Festival

Edinburgh International Festival

The Edinburgh International Festival is a festival of performing arts that takes place in the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, over three weeks from around the middle of August. By invitation from the Festival Director, the International Festival brings top class performers of music , theatre, opera...

 in Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

. The cube has since traveled to numerous museums throughout the world, and multiples of the installation have been added to the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

, the Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita, and the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan.

In 2000 the Picasso Museum

Château Grimaldi (Antibes)

The Château Grimaldi at Antibes is built upon the foundations of the ancient Greek town of Antipolis. Antibes is a resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes department in southeastern France, on the Mediterranean Sea.-History:...

 in Antibes, France held a solo exhibition of Sarkisian’s installations in concurrence with a show of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

's work. That same year, Italian art critic and curator Achille Bonito Oliva

Achille Bonito Oliva

Achille Bonito Oliva, is a recognized and respected Italian contemporary art critic, author of many essays on mannerism, and a professor of History of Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University in Rome...

 included Sarkisian’s ‘’Dusted’’ along with installations by Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono

is a Japanese artist, musician, author and peace activist, known for her work in avant-garde art, music and filmmaking as well as her marriage to John Lennon...

, Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...

, Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson may refer to:In politics:* Rob Wilson , British politician and entrepreneur, MP for Reading East* Robert J. Wilson, candidate in the 1953 Manitoba provincial election* Robert John Wilson, Member of Parliament for Jarrow...

and others in his exhibition titled ‘’Stanze é Segreti’’, which took place at the Rotonda della Besana in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

.

In 2001, Sarkisian exhibited along with Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon

Douglas Gordon is a Scottish artist; he won the Turner Prize in 1996 and the following year he represented Britain at the Venice Biennale...

, Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

, Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

, John Baldessari

John Baldessari

John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...

 and others in the exhibition titled ‘’Making Time: Considering Time as a Material in Contemporary Film and Video.’’ Curated by Amy Cappellazzo, the show was presented at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Lake Worth, Florida

Lake Worth, Florida

Lake Worth is a city in Palm Beach County, Florida, which takes its name from the body of water along its eastern border, originally called "Lake Worth", and now generally known as the Lake Worth Lagoon. The lake itself was named for General William J. Worth, who led U.S. forces during the last...

, then traveled to the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

.
In 2002, Sarkisian was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art

Whitney Museum of American Art

The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...

 Biennale

Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial is a biennale exhibition of contemporary American art, typically by young and lesser known artists, on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, USA. The event began as an annual exhibition in 1932, the first biennial was in 1973...

 exhibition, curated by Lawrence Rinder

Lawrence Rinder

Lawrence R. Rinder is the Director of Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive , a position to which he was appointed in 2008.Previously, he was the Dean of the College at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco...

. His contribution to the biennial was titled ‘’Hover’’, the second in a series of installations involving conjoined projections unfolding around the sides of a 33-inch cube. Also that year, Sarkisian exhibited work at the Contemporary Art Museum in Kumamoto, Japan, as well as in Mexico City

Mexico City

Mexico City is the Federal District , capital of Mexico and seat of the federal powers of the Mexican Union. It is a federal entity within Mexico which is not part of any one of the 31 Mexican states but belongs to the federation as a whole...

 at ‘’Vidarte 2002, Festival Internacional de Video y Artes Electrónicas’’.

In 2003, Sarkisian’s work was included by curator Dan Cameron

Dan Cameron

Dan Cameron is an American art curator based in New York City and New Orleans.Cameron's early years were spent in Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky and in Hudson Falls, NY. He attended Hudson Falls Public Schools , Syracuse University and Bennington College , where he earned a BA in 1979...

 as part of the Eighth International Istanbul Biennial

Istanbul Biennial

The International Istanbul Biennial is a contemporary art exhibition, held every two years in Istanbul, Turkey, since 1987. The biennial is organised by the İstanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts. The Biennial aims to create a meeting point in İstanbul in the field of visual arts between artists...

 in Istanbul, Turkey. Sarkisian’s installation, titled ‘’Bohr’s Atom’’, was commissioned for the biennial and explored Niels Bohr

Niels Bohr

Niels Henrik David Bohr was a Danish physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and quantum mechanics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1922. Bohr mentored and collaborated with many of the top physicists of the century at his institute in...

’s early observations concerning the quantum state of atoms.

In 2004, Sarkisian was tapped by Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

The Albright-Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located in Delaware Park in Buffalo, New York. The gallery is a major showplace for modern art and contemporary art. It is located directly across the street from Buffalo State College.-History:...

 curator Louis Grachos to appear in ‘’Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture’’. His work was also exhibited at the Foundazione Ragghianti in Lucca, Italy as part of a traveling show titled ‘’Journey of the Motionless Man’’, which had originated at the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art in Genova

Génova

Génova may refer to:* Spanish spelling of the city of Genoa, Italy* Génova, Quindío, a municipality in the department of Quindío, Colombia* Génova, Quetzaltenango, a municipality in the department of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala...

 the previous year.

In 2005-2006, Sarkisian’s ‘’Dusted’’ was paired with Steve McQueen

Steve McQueen

Terrence Steven "Steve" McQueen was an American movie actor. He was nicknamed "The King of Cool." His "anti-hero" persona, which he developed at the height of the Vietnam counterculture, made him one of the top box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s. McQueen received an Academy Award nomination...

’s ‘’Drum Roll’’ in a two-person exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

.

In 2007, Sarkisian debuted a new series titled ‘’Extruded Video Engine’’, in which the elements of video projection and three-dimensional vacuum formed screens were combined.

In 2008, works from the ‘’Extruded Video Engine’’ series were exhibited in solo shows at the Museum of Fine Arts (St. Petersburg, Florida) and the Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans. For the New Orleans show, Sarkisian used his video engines as a temporal mechanism through which to examine a one-year American media cycle, at whose exact midpoint Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina

Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...

 tore through the Gulf Coast.