Welcome to Hanskville, the solo show of the French artist Melik Ohanian will open on Thursday, January 22 at the Dvir Gallery, in the presence of the artist and of Ami Barak, Chief curator, Paris Municipality (France). Melik Ohanian belongs to the new rising generation of French contemporary artists, in great demand on the international stage. In 2002, his works were shown at the Palais de Tokyo and the Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, at the Galeria Novona in Roma and at Art Unlimited in Basel. In 2003, he had solo exhibitions at the Museum in Progress in Wien, and at the Atlanta College of Art in the USA. In 2004 he will participate to the Biennials of Berlin, Sydney and Sao Paulo. Melik Ohanian’s work is based on time, the production of a duration in another time, the time too early, the interval, the continuity and the discontinuity. In his recent works, he questions the notion of territory, of conquest as a foundation of the modernity. He refers also to the idea of a territory who does not belong to anyone - as this island of Iceland, which emerged in 1963 but has since been closed to human beings -, and of peripheries which indicate other territories, other geographical and political positions. In the video installation “Welcome to Hanskville” (which was first shown at the Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris, in Autumn 2003), Ohanian refers to Mars, unknown and yet explored, full of mystery and which make us dream of another world, maybe a better one. “It took a few centuries to move the Earth - and the human being on it - from its flattering position of the center of the world to the more harmless one of a small stone, lost in the immensity of the space”. Pierre Barthélémy, Le Monde, October 2001.