An Interview with RLM: Between Emptines and Presence

You work across painting, drawing, mixed media, sculpture, and mural painting. How do you decide which medium is most appropriate for a particular idea?

For me, it’s actually the opposite: I look at the medium and directly figure out what will be depicted. Often, the texture itself suggests what should be there. For example, a knot in the wood might tell me where a line should bend, a hole in the concrete might mark where a point should go, or a natural curve shows where one form transitions into another.

What usually comes first in your process: an image, a narrative, a feeling, or a particular space you want to create?

I was afraid of this question. Haha. When I work within a specific concept, I look for an image. Sometimes, an image (a face) forms the concept around itself. Once, I started painting a portrait of an acquaintance, but gradually her face changed, becoming more austere, detached, and aloof. Then the curve of the body just happened on its own to emphasize a lack of support. Stepping back, I simply saw a body in a striped suit worn by bureaucrats, a rooster's crow immediately sounded in my head, and then I just painted all of that. Simple as that. Though not quite.

Okay. Sometimes I just scribble something in a sketchbook and go: “Wow! I need to try this in another medium or on a large scale.” And sometimes it happens both ways at once: there was a sketch, I started transferring it onto a large format, and then some uncontrollable thing happens — an accidental stroke or mark — and after that, it's useless to follow the initial plan.

The void is central to your practice. What does the idea of the void mean to you personally and artistically?

Have you ever read that story by Ray Bradbury where some guys get into a space accident and start drifting apart in different directions? They fly away and talk on the radio about simple things, each knowing that soon the connection will cut off and they’ll be flying in total silence until their oxygen runs out. One by one, the signal drops, they say goodbye to each other, and then the main character is left alone, floating through the infinite in absolute silence.

That thing really struck me. I thought, wow, what is it like to accept something like that? How do you process a death like that in your mind? I began to think that the void, if you accept it, actually turns out to be a pretty comfortable space. It can be physical, like in that story, or social. A void like that either terrifies you or gently wraps around you — it all depends on your attitude.

My void is my place where nothing happens. Something like “no alarms and no surprises,” haha. Overall, it's actually really cool to work with something that isn't there.

In your work, the void appears both as a shelter and as something threatening. How do you understand this tension between safety and disappearance?

It’s generally tough to dig inside yourself; it’s like, just look at my paintings.

In principle, there is no real tension here. A place can be both a prison and infinite space: “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” You can be absolutely free and feel like the ruler of infinity even in the tiny, enclosed space of a nutshell — if not for bad dreams. Right?..

Your characters often seem to exist outside ordinary time and space. What kind of world do they inhabit?

I think there is definitely no sound in this world. If someone screams or laughs there — nobody hears it. It feels to me like the humidity in this world is higher than usual… here is a good example: when a cloud rolls over a mountain — you stop seeing far ahead, everything becomes damp, sound gets lost, and direction no longer matters.

Themes of alienation, the loss of former coordinates, and fear of the future recur throughout your work. How have these ideas developed within your practice?

It’s just that all of this is happening right now. Or more precisely — it was happening, is happening, and will keep happening.

Many of your characters have reduced or completely absent eyes. What does the disappearance of vision represent in your work?

At one point, I thought that all society demands from a person is their eyes. I can’t give them away, so I take them back for myself. Today, it feels like it might actually be better to be without them altogether, doesn't it? Although then I’d have to either fully commit to sculpture or wash dishes in Yerevan.

Do you see your characters as individual figures with their own stories, or as manifestations of broader emotional and existential states?

It’s hard to come up with a story where a woman without eyes has her eyes stuck in her hair… Though that would be an interesting exercise to develop imagination. I should try that with my older students. Kids handle stuff like that remarkably well.

Okay, on a serious note — my characters are the children of emotions, experiences, and a frozen nowhere.

Flowers occasionally appear in your paintings as what you describe as “ontological markers.” What role do they play within the worlds you create?

An ontological marker? Haha. Well yeah, I definitely came up with a fancy phrase there. Though in a way, it actually is. Let me try to explain it in simple terms. Flowers grow. Flowers grow, and that in itself is proof that life is possible in this particular world.

There was this really cool animated show about astronauts who land on another planet, and the surrounding life generally follows standard patterns — living things reproduce, predators hunt, and so on — but for the astronauts, this life is incomprehensible, dangerous, and irrational. They can’t fit into it, except maybe by becoming part of the food chain.

I think that in my drawings, flowers serve the same function — they confirm the presence of life, but it’s not the kind of life you’re used to. What’s more: I’m not even sure it’s a place where you should be in the first place. Oh man… And I’m a huge fan of Art Nouveau: if you don’t know what to draw — draw flowers. Everything is in them.

Your work often creates a distance between the viewer and the character. How important is this separation to the experience of the work?

If it were possible, I’d exhibit my work in a vacuum — so that the void isn't just inside the piece itself, but something you can feel in another way.

Okay. My characters need to exist not only in the void of the painting, but also in the void of the real world. Maybe that's why only the dudes who get the point hang my paintings in their homes. Maybe I’m caring for the viewer that way, haha — you know, when you see a vicious animal on a leash, you’re secretly glad the leash is there. In my case, the leash is the division between the viewer and the painting. It’s cool that it exists.

Generally speaking, interacting with art isn't always something pleasant.

How do ideas of memory and a life left behind enter your paintings?

How else… When the only thing you can afford to protect yourself from the past (and, by the way, the present and the future) is the desire to close your eyes and dissolve into the void, you immediately start painting characters without eyes and in the void.

It smells a lot like escapism… Well yeah, in principle, that’s exactly what it is. But as it was said in a movie: “All men would be cowards if they durst.” It’s pretty much the same thing here.

You primarily work with oil on canvas, ink and paper, while your sculptures are built through a layered process. How does working physically with different materials affect the way an idea develops?

I think we’re gonna end up with a great interview about which movies influenced me. Maybe later we can make a separate list of films that affected my art as a bonus point? There’s going to be a wild mix here between the movie “Birdman” and “The House That Jack Built.”

Material has character. It has structure. Structure is something that grows from within. Working with different materials, you can't ignore the content (read — structure) — it’s always an interaction. You interact with the material, and it interacts with you. You press — it responds. You guide a line — it breaks it off.

The coolest thing is when, as a result of a long battle with the material, you both end up with nothing — it is destroyed, and you created nothing. You’re broken — it’s broken. That’s honest. The coolest things can never be seen in a museum. Not for the viewer.

Your sculptures are constructed gradually until they achieve a certain tectonic density. How does this process relate to the themes present in your two-dimensional work?

Just recently I spent a really long time messing around with one thing: I was mixing acrylic with baking soda, making a form out of crumpled foil, covering the whole thing in acrylic, waiting for it to dry, covering it again, and so on. Really long and many times over.

Then I sat down to paint what I got, and at some point the whole construction dropped onto the floor (remember that internet photo where a clay head fell on the floor and ended up with a flattened face?). And I’m thinking, “Thank God I don't work with clay,” feeling totally sure that nothing had happened. I reached out, picked it up, and saw a crack running right through half of the sculpture. A crack! And I’m looking at it thinking — damn, this is literally the best part of the whole thing. This is just everything. One part separated from the other and exposed what was inside. Wow. The resulting void opened up the interior. Life itself gave me a hint right there.

But generally, the simple answer is this: in 2D and sculpture, I try to explore the exact same thing — the beauty of the floral motif and the absence of everything.

You are currently exploring outer space as another form of emptiness. What drew you from the psychological or existential void toward the cosmic vacuum?

Back in the day, I was really struck by the movie “Melancholia” (SPOILER ALERT). There’s one extremely cool idea there: that life on Earth is essentially the only form of life in the entire cosmos, and if it’s gone, there will be no life at all — never, anywhere. That this right here is the single red-listed species. And if it disappears — what changes? The answer is: nothing.

I thought that was incredibly powerful — entire galaxies with no life in them. Nowhere at all. Sometimes it feels like that would be better than what we’ve done. My void responded to the void.

In your new series, constellations become points of orientation within otherwise empty space. What do these reference points represent for you?

It wasn’t my idea, but I found it pretty cool: what if all the darkness surrounding us is just a black dome with holes poked in it with a needle, and now we’re seeing light through them? Like The Truman Show, but for the entire planet.

In one of the Futurama episodes, Fry is taken to see the end of the universe — they arrive, and there’s one of those coin-operated viewing machines usually installed at tourist spots. The joke is that the machine points into nowhere. Stars are just the next level of the void.

Some constellations in your work carry mythological or personal meanings. How do these two forms of memory intersect within the new series?

Sometimes it comes from personal meaning: if I use the image of a real person in my paintings, I ask the model to suggest a specific constellation to me. Very often that becomes the title of the piece. Sometimes I ask my wife to help me. Sometimes it’s a random set of stars that highlights the unreality of what’s happening.

I get a huge kick out of that phone app that helps you find constellations in the sky when you point your camera at it. I don’t have one specific constellation that captures me, but I love looking at Ursa Major from different parts of the world.

The coolest story is about a painting titled "Lyra" (which, by the way, was exhibited in Tbilisi). Long story short, the lyre helped Orpheus rescue his love from the realm of Hades. It’s a great story about how having eyes didn't lead to anything good. Or having a neck, haha. But my art right now is concentrated specifically on the eyes.

How is your understanding of the void changing as your practice develops, and where do you see this exploration moving next?

I think that at the very end of my art, there should only be a blank sheet of paper left. Everything that reaches its limit turns into its opposite.