Unnatural Selections by David Yaghjian

Columbia native and artistic mainstay David Yaghjian, is among one of the most original Contemporary painters in the Carolinas. With Unnatural Selections,  artist David Yaghjian presents new paintings and sculptures. Yaghjian has shown extensively throughout the Southeast, including at Blue Spiral I in Asheville, N.C.; the Florence (S.C.) Museum of Art; the S.C. State Museum and McKissick Museum in Columbia; and the Spruill Center Gallery in Atlanta. In Atlanta he also has painted several murals. Yaghjian holds a BA from Massachusetts’ Amherst College and studied in New York City at the Art Students League and the School of Visual Art. Among his instructors were Fairfield Porter, Leonard Baskin, Will Barnett and Chaim Koppelman.

Yaghjian was selected for the 701 Center for the Contemporary Art’s Biennial 2013, 2015, and 2017. And has been featured in the 2012 book 100 Southern Artists. In addition, Yaghjian has had many exhibitions of the years some of which include his major 2011 solo exhibition, David Yaghjian: Everyman Turns Six at the Gallery 80808/Vista Studios in Columbia organized by if Art Gallery. And another exhibition in 2015, Scenes at if ART Gallery, with featured catalogue presenting a long, poetic artist statement by Yaghjian.

In 2012, he was included in Faces of Figureworks: Self Portraits at Figureworks gallery in Brooklyn, N.Y., an exhibition that included Byron Browne, Philip Evergood, Red Grooms, Chaim Gross, Jack Levine and Raphael and Moses Soyer. He was among six artists in the 2007 Greenville County (S.C.) Museum of Art exhibition Studio Visits. That year’s David & Edmund Yaghjian, which included his late father’s work, was at if ART Gallery.