Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present Vahakn Arslanian: A Retrospective, from October 9 - November 8, 2003. At 27, Arslanian has already created a prodigious body of work (he began exhibiting at 13). The exhibition will trace his evolution, and will include works made as a teenager up until the present with about 50% of the show comprised of new work. The gallery will also exhibit Arslanian's sculptural objects for the first time; light bulbs of various shapes and sizes that he has altered through breaking and melting them, as well as several that he has cast in bronze. A DVD catalogue will be available prior to the exhibition.

Deaf since birth, Arslanian began to make art as a child (eight of his early works were recently selected for Golden Blessings of Old Age; Out of the Mouths of Babes, a yearlong exhibit at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore beginning this October). In 1990 he was the subject of a video documentary "Vahakn: Portrait of an Artist", narrated by Julian Schnabel. Schnabel devoted the entire introduction of his 1987 book C.V.J. (Nicknames of Maitre D's and Excerpts from Life) of his observations of Arslanian as a five year old . "Vahakn has a true relationship between his soul and hand," he said in an inter- view last year. "He is a true painter."