300 Paintings – Manic and Marvelous
Sam Kissajukian was diagnosed bipolar late in life. (He’s now 38.) This is the performer’s story of weathering a last emotional and physical cyclone before seeking help. Wrapped in humor and elusive pathos, narrated by his lightning fast, pinball mind, it’s the smartest, most arresting and original piece of theater I’ve seen in years and decidedly NOT a pity party. “Don’t feel sorry for me -I’m here. You paid for it,” Sam quips with a grin.
The show begins as stand-up, which was, in fact, his past profession. Wandering around the stage, he congenially draws us in, a monologist eliciting occasional response. When Sam realized he’d started giving people what they wanted rather than sharing who he was, he quit the stage — and art school having barely started the latter in 2021. He realized a fantasy by renting an empty bakery warehouse in which to live – no windows, no neighbors – and decided to stay put until next steps became evident. A six month manic episode sent him spiraling. A discarded beret inspired him to paint.
Over the year, Sam executed a painting a day, totaling 300 – many of which we see on screen. He began by examining “the question artists ask themselves before they die” when every painting might be the last. A self portrait appears to be elderly. Freewheeling experimentation emerges in diverse styles. Imagine what the world thought when cubism and abstraction first emerged or reactions to the iconoclastic visions of Jean Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring.
A commission depicting his friend holding a borrowed baby (we see the photo) looks rather like two faceless figures in inflated, white bubble spacesuits. “I sent them a picture. They never wrote back.” There’s “Self Portrait Crawling Across his Self Conscious,” a scrawled turtle shell weighing down the figure on all fours. Reinterpretation of “The Last Supper” is created with disconnected lines like a frenzied Paul Klee.
Sam decided to conjure dreams by flipping his sleep cycle 12 hours every two days, which would affect anyone’s equanimity. “Suddenly my subconscious, unconscious and conscious came together. I’d discovered the best way to develop psychosis.” He zipped through euphoria, distractability, anxious distress, racing thoughts… painted LARGE, then tiny modernist motifs creating shoe box dioramas for the latter. Thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci provoked him to invent, which he proceeded to do in accordance with a spread sheet schedule at a dizzying rate.
As Sam came up with things, he offered them to plausible investors over the net. There was serious interest in several. ZOOM meetings turned into absurdist encounters, business plans became seemingly nonsensical charts. When people were interested, he veered. “That was Monday’s idea, this is Thursday. You missed the boat.” At one point, the ersatz entrepreneur proposed becoming a bank to sell discontinued coins in order to pay for …At another, he drafted a museum. The Kafkaesque fact is that money men were intrigued rather than discouraged by oblique explanations. Listen carefully.
Seen another way, sequential product development might be conceptual art, once called Happenings. There’s not much difference in lack of substance between these and Crypto Currency, NFTs (non-fungible tokens), or The Emperor’s New Clothes. The recent sale of a banana taped to a wall entitled Comedian, by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, garnered $6.2 million dollars at auction. No joke. Sam’s ideas are much more entertaining. They even have their own unique Looking Glass logic. The piece’s non-ending is as idiosyncratic as the show.
Up front about parentheses of madness and methodology for survival, the artist is candid and almost matter of fact. Mid 2022, after recovery, diagnosis and treatment, Sam Kissajukian began performing again as well as holding his first solo exhibition. Both aspects of his life have kept him extremely busy.
Two rooms at the theater are hung with his art. One holds a partially finished canvas. Sam paints during his stay in New York. Don’t fail to read the wonderful titles and descriptions. There’s also an opportunity to talk to him. An exhibition of work here in the spring is being discussed. Until then, exhibited art is not for sale.
Photos by Carol Rosegg
300 Paintings
Created and Performed by Sam Kissajukian
Through December 15, 2024
Vineyard Theatre
108 East 15th Street
