Stan Manoukian, “The Kingdom”
Opening Reception: October 5th, 6-8 pm
October 5th – November 3rd, 2019
Haven Gallery is pleased to present “The Kingdom”, a collection of new drawings from French illustrator Stan Manoukian. “The Kingdom” is Manoukian’s first solo show at the gallery and will feature the artists quintessential monsters and creatures of the forest, exemplarily drawn and surrealistically conceived. Manoukian uses intricate line work to create a myriad of characters and narratives that tickle the imagination. His sense of story and mood is accentuated by an extensive exploration of medium as light is shaped to create depth and form. A variety of moods and expressions are propagated throughout each drawing to humanize his surreal beings; yet a hyperbolic approach to their features lend them closer to the imaginative, whimsical entities birthed from ones childhood. Manoukian’s playful works invite us to visit our youthful memories of time spent outdoors. An emphasis on the flourishing of nature uncovers all the fanciful critters that live and play beneath the fecund growth and cyclical seasons.
About Stan Manoukian:
“Stan Manoukian is a French graphic artist born in 1969 in Paris. He has had a passion for drawing since his childhood and most of his inspiration comes from retro sci-fi, classic monster movies, as well as the novels of authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Lovecraft, Mary Shelley and Jules Verne.
In 1988, after he graduated from the Estienne Art School, he started to work in France and the United States as a cartoonist, designer and storyboarder for the movie industry and in advertising.
In 2007, Manoukian issued himself an artistic challenge: draw one monster a day for one year. This larger scale initiative gave birth to the book called Diary of Inhuman Species, published by Ankama the following year.
Since then, the exploration of his phantasmagoric world pushes him towards bigger and more ambitious projects, testing diverse techniques in both drawing and sculpture.
He belongs to the worldwide generation of post lowbrow artists. With his increasingly detailed content, abounding with dreamlike creatures, his work harkens to the romantic paintings from the nineteenth century. His menagerie is composed of creatures both extraterrestrial and from the deepest abysses on Earth, thereby transporting the viewer to a fantastic and surrealistic world, where nature is omnipresent.
Heir of Gustave Doré, Franklin Booth, and Bernie Wrightson, Stan Manoukian refines a unique visual scripture through hatching and dimming, which employs ink or graphite to mimic an engraving.
Currently, his works are internationally recognized and have been displayed in several exhibitions and books in the USA, Japan, Australia, France and Europe.”
