Born Cleveland, OH, 1969, Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA

Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2003 'Valley of Unrest', Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles 2002 'Amy Sarkisian', Marella Arte Contemporanea, Milan 1999 'The Perfect Ham', Algemaxx 1234 Gallery, Los Angeles

Selected Group Exhibitions: 2003 'We Are Electric', Dietch Projects, New York; 'Light and Spaced Out', Galerie Loevenbruck, Paris 2002 'Play it as it Lays', The London Institute Gallery, UK; 'Funeral Home' Marc Foxx, Los Angeles 2001 'Bastard,(son of hot sauce)', The Law Office, Chicago 2000 'Mysterious Prey', Roberts & Titlon Gallery, Los Angeles; 'Young and Dumb' Acme, Los Angeles 1999 'Vasquessarkisianpestonilattuhuges', Studio 870, Los Angeles 1997 'Malibu Sex Party', Purple, Los Angeles

Selected Bibliography: 2003 Renard, Emilie, 'Critic's Picks,' Artforum.com; Ollman, Leah, 'Art tests our openness,' Los Angeles Times 2002 Jana, Reena, 'Amy Sarkisian', Tema Celeste; Charlesworth, JJ, 'Play it as it Lays', Artext; Cooper, Dennis, 'First Take: New Art, New Artists', Artforum 1998 Hainley, Bruce, 'Malibu Sex Party', Artforum

Amy Sarkisian

Strains of perverse craftiness permeate most of Amy Sarkisian's work from obvious associations of ornamental beading, collage, and carved apple heads, to more specialized practices such as the retro-scientific facial reconstructions made of sculpted clay over skulls. Sarkisian's crafty side tempers her subject matter the visual index of youth subcultures that brand themselves with dark, nihilistic imagery. Because they are absurd and unpolished, Sarkisian's objects allow her to walk the line of genuine affection for this darkly rebellious visual culture, while keeping a critical eye positioned on how the images function as borrowed symbols.

For Toy Skull Reconstructions, Sarkisian revives a practice of forensic modeling that remolds the faces of deceased persons through precise calculations of underlying skull structure. Leaving aside the potentially gruesome end that might have befallen the anonymous subjects, there is something intensely discomfiting about their visages. Despite, and perhaps, due to the painstaking effort to scientifically revisualize life, there is something at once too generic and yet too extreme in each of their faces. Mounted on pedestals much like artifacts or ceremonial busts, they nevertheless don't read as portraits. Approaching humanity, but stopping just short of human, they are uncanny, in a pathetic, funny-looking, and mildly repulsive way.

The absurd goth posturing of these figures links Toy Skull Reconstructions to Sarkisian's exploration of the visual archives of genres like post-punk, goth, heavy metal, and fantasy. Unlike some of her contemporaries who seem content to venerate these bad-ass graphics and hardcore macabre motifs, Sarkisian seems to understand something deeper about the way these subcultures have aestheticized death and violence to the point of no return. Despite any original religious or mythic power of these representational tropes, the skulls, monsters, flames, crosses, and capes that crowd the visual landscape cease to conjure any real emotional or visceral response. In its total fakeness and homely perversity, Sarkisian's work reveals that artifice itself is all that remains to believe in, as she asks us to worship stylized empty relics of an over-processed visual language.

Liz Thomas