Скульптор Армен Агоп: кризис классического камня — миф, а не реальность

YEREVAN/PIETRASANTA, Italy – Armen Agop, née Armen Guerboyan (born Cairo in 1969) is a contemporary artist. At the age of thirteen, he began studying drawing and painting with the Armenian artist Simon Shahrigian. He later studied sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Helwan University in Cairo. After graduating, he received an assistant researcher scholarship and taught sculpture at the university for three years. Between 1997 and 2000, he participated in numerous exhibitions across Egypt, Qatar, Italy, Belgium, USA, UAE and won the Sculpture Prize of the Autumn Salon in 1998. In 2000, he received Egypt’s prestigious Prix de Rome, the State Prize of Artistic Creativity. Following this award, he spent time in Rome and later settled in Pietrasanta. He is known for his ascetic approach to abstract sculpture, primarily using black granite and basalt. Agop gained international recognition for his contemplative sculptures and painting series such as Touch, Sufic, and MANTRA. His works are included in major collections such as the Egyptian Museum of Modern Art, Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, and the Barjeel Art Foundation. For more about Armen Agop visit: https://www.armenagop.com Armen, some say classical stone sculpture is currently facing a certain crisis worldwide. Do you agree? I don’t see it that way. I see that there is a generation that became distant from the process of making in general and became detached from the material due to the influence of conceptual works. However, I always believed that that couldn’t continue for long, we can’t forbid children from enjoying to draw and paint, so I have been waiting for the change. I see it’s changing now, and maybe going to the extreme opposite, where we start to see craft-oriented works, maybe even exaggerated.