Tufenkian Fine Arts is honored to present Vahe Berberian: A Kiss is not Lip Service, an exhibition featuring selected new works by Vahe Berberian. The show be on view September 19 through October 25, 2019.

This is Berberian’s first solo exhibition at Tufenkian Fine Arts. A Kiss Is Not Lip Service will feature over 40 of Berberian’s recent and never seen before works on canvas and paper. The multifaceted artist who has become a household name with his monologues, plays and novels says he is his most ruthless critic; It has taken him a while to finally feel satisfied with this new body of work. “Almost all of these pieces” Barbarian says “have more than a dozen layers to them. I paint over and over again until I give the piece enough texture to have its own history. I stop only when I realize that I can’t touch the piece any more. I have been preparing for this exhibition for the past five years and, honestly, I haven’t been this excited for a long time”.

“As is expected, the narrative, the story, and the narrator, the storyteller, need some way to get the story out there to an audience; to be processed, thought about, analyzed, questioned, considered. Berberian grants us his novels, his theater pieces and the wealth of his visual works, which are comprised of assemblage, works on paper, mixed media and paintings on canvas,” says Kireilyn Barber who contributed the essay for the 62 page monograph accompanying this exhibition. Berberian’s abstract pieces are poetic and at the same time display a harmonious restraint of palette and composition. His use of color, form, language and texture create a powerful narrative rooted in time, memory, and personal history.“Vahe’s prominent inclusion of letterforms, words and writing from various languages” Barber continues “comprise the codex for his expression of personal and universal history.”