Tamar Hovsepian / 2026
Karen Ohanyan’s Charlie’s Dream is a quiet yet philosophically charged reflection on companionship, nature, and the contradictions of contemporary life. Composed of delicate drawings and collages, the series was created while the artist and his dog, Charlie, lived in isolation in the village of Kaghsi, Armenia. Removed from the noise and velocity of urban life, within this intimate space the artist produces not only a portrait of a dog, but also a subconscious—a dreaming subject whose inner life becomes a means of rethinking human values.
Tamar Hovsepian / 2024
Between the sky and the earth there is an eternal space where life begins and ends. Once it begins, it flows and feels like a blink of an eye, yet some blink more than once.
Momik Vardanyan / 2023
Karen Ohanyan is a painter working with series and periods, and this exhibition [The Dreamer] is an attempt to defend painting as an idea of organization of life, beyond the consumerist notions of the market.
Vardan Jaloyan / 2023
Artist Karen Ohanyan now lives on the outskirts of Gyumri, where a spectacular view opens. It's a green field, two factory buildings and a chimney can be seen in the distance. Storks, perhaps the only pair in the city, have nested next to the house. An almost idyllic landscape, which, however, awakened other moods in the artist. It can be described as revolutionary melancholy.
Hrachya Galstyan / 2022
First, why "Khaltura"? "During the Soviet period, in order to raise the aesthetic taste of the population and carry out propaganda work, the state allocated large sums of money to "decorate" the corridors and cabinets in factories and state institutions with paintings... For this purpose, under the Union of Artists operated the art combine. It was a real combine that was creating pictures, posters and portraits of the Politburo. Among the artists, making money in this way was considered a "khaltura (hack)". Some artists were busy only with that. They were called "Khalturshik (hacker)".
Champion — Armenak Grigoryan / 2022
The time of traversing space gradually turns into a “ruined” monument to living a life. The triumphant image of masculine power points to the inconspicuous subtlety of giving in to the fragility of life. While relating to The Champion, we continue feeling the bodily pleasure of yielding to life.
Armen Yesayants / 2021
In the contemporary art scene of post-Soviet Armenia (especially of 2000s), Karen Ohanyan’s every single new work or series is both urgent and relevant with a precise discourse: whether it is political, social, or pure artistic. The Sevan series featuring three paintings also has the same ambition. Despite having a stylistic resemblance with the general oeuvre of the artist, each of these works boldly stands out from his earlier pieces.
Ashot Pashinyan / 2021
Karen Ohanyan's Sevan series of canvases is one of those exceptional bodies of work that carries and records the weightiest missions of different times in art. By reaffirming the artist as a great intellectual, this series of the painter's is a record of the most important questions of new realities and new times.
Bella Hakobjanyan / 2021
What comes before your eyes when you read the title? The things I witnessed at the gallery surprised me a little, but then attracted and moved me. This is Sevan just as it is, and not in the way we would like to imagine or perceive it; it tells about itself and introduces to the viewer. After spending a while in the main hall, I started to experience some exciting sensations: tranquility and harmony, anxiety and alarm at the same time. When I entered the hall, my attention was obviously captured by the arrangement of canvases. Three works were exhibited on three separate walls and each of them had its own individual lighting. The lighting in its turn generalizes a holistic perception of the pictures. However, it isn’t that easy to instantly perceive these works of Karen Ohanyan.
Elena Aydinyan / 2016
During the 1920’s, the Soviet people were engaged in building a utopia. That utopia seemed to be absolutely feasible. Russian avant-garde was one of the ways to construct a new World. The subsequent periods of Soviet history indicate the failure of the realization of the utopia assumed by the 1920’s. One after another they alienated and washed away its contour.
Vardan Jaloyan / 2008
Karen Ohanyan’s “Real Utopias” series, created a few years ago, was ranked among the best paintings of the year. [2] I think Ohanyan’s latest series of paintings, “Body Investment”. Also deserves such high praise. It’ s not difficult to find commonalities between these two projects, even if the first is more existential and the second, more political. In “Real Utopias”, the body is viewed as a last “real thing” and as a utopia – the last free creative space. In “Body Investments”, the body is viewed differently; it is an actual space, a battlefield of micropowers.
Eva Khachatryan / 2007
The gloomy wall, erected by Karen Ohanyan, arouses several associations. First with symbolism of barrier, obstacle and walls famous in the history of mankind, which have caused revolutions and wars. After this in Ohanyan’s works the wall turns into part of a larger attention to every stone and its specific significance.
Gohar Vardanyan / 2006
From May 5-31, 2006, Karen Ohanyan’s “Real Utopias” exhibition was heldin one of the contemporary art museums called ACCEA (Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art). In the accompanying textof the exhibition the curator and art critic Vardan Azatyan presented the author using the formal-structural and social analysis of his works.
Vardan Azatyan / 2006
If taking into account artistic and technical characteristics, as well as the scale and ambition of Karen Ohanyan’s series Real Utopias (2005-2006), one can claim that they are among the best paintings recently produced in Armenia. This article attempts at a formal- structural and social analysis of this series.