Vilik Zakaryan is a one of those representatives of modern Armenian fine arts who have created their style for decades as a result of unique artistic thinking and image integrated into the surrounding world.

Watching the canvases written by Vilik, one can be convinced that he is an obvious master of compositions. It attracts and embraces the volume of rhythm, touches of light, the magical process of ordinary paint turning into a painting colour. What impress more are interesting combinations of interpenetration of lines and colours, their pure integration and a high level of general skillful performance. His line is meaningful, pithy and generalized. Occasionally, not only does it precede but also follow the colour as if being born from the latter and outlining the entire surface of the painting with its free flight and capricious rotations.

A painter striving for generalizations frequently uses various symbols and diagrams of geometrical figures, for example, nails, triangles, plans, arrows etc. In the meantime, synthesizing seeming at first glance incomparable or unsynthesized objects and resorting to other conventional means, he makes use of allegorical images by creating and conveying some meaning in each object. What is interesting is that not only do broken proportionalities lead to dissonance, but also create a kind of harmonious and eye-striking environment and artistically-saturated space. In addition, the latter is almost always “interrupted” by square images resembling chessboards.

The matter is that the meaningful game of the artist is above all a symbol of eternal struggle between black and white, evil and kind. The latter is very frequently noticed among Vilik’s characters which resembling one another every time appear in various environment and in different outfits, at times speaking and at times appreciably silent. Vilik’s depicted heroes as a rule are devoid of any outlined and expressed features. But they have an expressive look, internal force conveying deep lyricism and mood.

What is also distinctive about his paintings is the presence of internal peace which one can see in almost all works of Vilik Zakaryan. Whatever he depicts, be it Nature or any scene of man’s everyday life, an episode of struggle or a moment of a quiet conversation, the author is in search of harmony and sees it everywhere, even at first glance chaos-seeming situations. The secret is that harmony already lies deep inside his soul, his inner life.

Vilik Zakaryan’s works are flooded with various subjects and genres. The artist covers from fabulous and mythological subjects to urgent problems of today. They are often expressed by a set of paintings in which paintings are combined not only according to their sizes and composition structure, but also the continuous creation, development and interpretation of the same subject. Undoubtedly, the abundance of what is to be said, as well as the rise of various questions give birth to similar sets of collection by “distributing” the search of their solution from painting to painting. This fact is likely also conditioned by multi-planning system inherent to Vilik’s paintings. They are expanded and developing actions spread over various surfaces covering the same subject. One can see the flight of author’s thought depicted in many graphical compositions, also in paintings which cross before the eyes of a watcher in the form of a range of episodes.

Vilik Zakaryan has long considered himself an accomplished artist with his own “world” and style. Nonetheless, he keeps on searching in the hope of finding new ways of expression and manners. For example, he worked out a unique method of production out of foreign dye stuffs which enabled him to create graphical spectacular papers. Similar searches brought about unique manifestation of voluminous painting when the canvas surface finds its continuation from a cardboard or in another adjacent volume made from another material or a whole painting is formed out of several various-sized canvases.

Each day given by God is a best event and opportunity for an artist like Vilik Zakaryan to create still new works. With the reflection of today’s difficulties and problems, they bear a  kind of mission or meaning of the appreciation and evaluation of this short-lived terrestrial life. At the same time they refer to the truth confirming that one ought to beautify one’s life to live it beautifully. This is what Vilik Zakaryan depicts in his works. In other words, he beautifies not only his, but also the lives of many of his admirers and followers of his art.

Levon Lachikyan

Aesthete