Vahakn Arslanian

b. 1975 · New York City, USA

Deaf from birth and in love with the beauty of shattered glass, he sets candles, birds and Boeings inside real broken windows.

The life

Arslanian was born in Antwerp in 1975 and raised in SoHo, New York, in a family of art collectors; his father Ara was a noted collector of Basquiat. Deaf from birth and autistic, he began painting and working with glass early, and emerged into a steady exhibiting life from 1995, showing in New York and internationally, including Wings of Light at Marc Jancou in Geneva in 2013.

The work

Mixed media built into and onto found objects: antique window sashes, lightbulbs, jet-engine fans and massive airliner cockpit windows, with broken glass reworked using stained-glass lead lines. His recurring cast of candles, birds and aircraft gets spliced into visions of beauty and absurdity: a plane with bird’s wings, a candle with too many flames, a flock of tiny Boeing jets converging on the vortex of a shattered pane.

Why we love them

Most artists paint the window; he paints the break in it. Destruction and tenderness held in the same frame, literally.

Go deeper

• Vahakn Arslanian at the Outsider Art Fair
• Andrew Edlin Gallery
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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