In Fluence: The Aura of Succession brings together four artists – Vigen Tadevossian of Yerevan, Kiki (Grigor Mikaelian) of Yerevan and Los Angeles, Lark (Larisa Pilinsky) of Los Angeles, and Georgeanne Aldrich Heller of Los Angeles and New York – who have taught and influenced one another. In Fluence traces the sequence of mentorship from artist to artist, and from continent to continent. Peter Frank, curator of In Fluence, writes, “Art historians delight in tracing influence between artists, but so do the rest of us. The lineages described by paths of influence help us concretely understand the motivations of artists and the ways in which their art functions. The methods they employ, the meanings with which they invest their work, the conditions of their artistic and personal lives are all illumined by their connections to other artists, most especially the fellow artists whose presence in their lives resounds in the work they make. We speculate on unadmitted influences between artists, and we seize upon admitted influences, in order to clarify technique, ideology, personal history, and myriad other factors. Who was doing what to whom makes for a good read, but who was doing what according to whom makes for good history. “Who teaches whom? Pedagogical lineage need not be a straight line; it can meander all over artistic practice, all over society, and all over the globe. An Armenian artist comes under the sway of another in Yerevan. The student moves to Moscow and teaches a Russian artist; both move to Los Angeles, where the Russian artist encounters an American – an inhabitant of both LA and New York – and teaches her. Each artist manifests characteristics of his or her teacher, but, like a game of Telephone, the student’s student’s student – the American – makes art that little resembles that of the Armenian (whom she has never met) at the head of the queue. Everybody’s more or less abstract, but the resemblances little converge otherwise. “The particular lineage traced here in In Fluence flows not from generation to generation but from one end of a country to another, and from one country – and one continent – to another. It flows from one kind of artist to another, and from one kind of person to another. It even flows from one gender to the other. And in the process, it flows from one medium to another. In one style, out the other.”
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