The artwork of Artush Petrosyan belongs to the European tradition of expressionistic abstractionism, specifically to the movements of Arte Povera and Recycle Art.
Similar to Lucio Fontana, who combined sculpture with painting, and Bernard Aubertin, Mario Merz, Jannis Kounellis, Antoni Tapies I Puig, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Piero Manzoni, Giuseppe Penone, Gilberto Zorio, Giovanni Anselmo, Luciano Fabro, from the older generation, as well as more young artists Hatoum Mona, Eleanor Bartlett, and Tania Welz, Petrosyan rejects consumerism and the sense layers associated with manipulative or illustrative traditional art forms, turning instead to "primary matter".

This allows him “to tap mythological sources and to realize authentic and universal values”, as wrote Laural Wintraub in her essay on Piero Manzoni (Grove Art Online). In other words, Artush Petrosyan creates transcendent art transmitting it through archetypal primal materials of nature.
To express the very fabric of natural existence, Petrosyan utilizes materials of organic origin. In addition to traditional canvas and oil paints, he employs charcoal, bitumen, iron, wool, fabrics, ropes, sand, stones, and ashes from his burnt paintings. As a manifestation of the "pressure of civilization," he also incorporates plastic as an inorganic material. These materials create collisions and dialogues of energies, polarities, textures, and structures, giving birth to emotions and meanings in his artworks.

Externally, his creations appear as abstractions, where a piece of tree trunk, melted plastic, painted and paint-free or bitumen-free surfaces, bound with ropes and fabric, folds and pile of the fabric, serve as drawings with marking lines, points, compositions of plastic masses, and an energy field. Their color palette is relatively monochromatic, consisting of black, gray, white, sandy, and red tones. However, these colors also carry archetypal symbolism: black represents tragedy, death, earth, and transformation; red signifies blood and life; white embodies perfection, the absolute, and universality, sandy – the color of the sun. Here, textures and their placement become an additional "color" and providers of information.

Therefore, while being abstractions, Artush Petrosyan's creations are absolutely defined and specific. For example, the pyramid is made of tree trunk pieces (object "No. 5"), bound with coarse canvas "bandages" at the base, with a metal blade resting on one of the stumps, and the entire object covered with streaks of black plastic. What does this composition convey? No matter how much one tries to create something alive and whole from a sawn tree, it cannot be resurrected. It represents the idea of the unrepeatable of all living things and the pain of their destruction.

Artist statement

Artush Petrosyan's artworks revolve around the concept of the world's uniqueness, its fragility, and the desire to preserve its integrity. Thus, his art is profoundly existential, reminding us of ecology in the broadest sense, the interconnectedness between humans, nature, and technology, and the responsibility of humans in the world. It transcends the categories of time and memory, confronting polarities such as «static-dynamic," "eternal-transient, past-present,” love and pain, leading through experience and overcoming to freedom. They demand meditation, where the fusion of different materials captures the moment of transformation and transcendence.

As it is seen, in Petrosyan's artworks, tree become more than just an object of nature, separate from humans. Through the symbol of the "tree of life," it corresponds to the idea of humans as trees and life, and a part of nature. Just as a tree can feel and be alive, so can humans.

From this perspective, Artush Petrosyan's use of charcoal, charred wood, and ashes from his own artworks in his compositions is not accidental. If Bernard Aubertin created "fire-paintings, «interpreting fire as a symbol of "cleansing" and "liberation, «in Petrosyan's artworks, charcoal and bitumen (which are also melted by fire) represent both destruction and at the same time - rebirth. Here, the traditions of cremation, the use of bitumen in Ancient Egypt for embalming the dead, and the contemporary trend of creating diamonds and gemstones from the ashes of deceased pets and even loved ones, as seen in Japan and the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries, converge. The ashes of his own artworks, as a part of the artist's life embedded in the natural material of canvas, undergo a process of destruction while simultaneously being reborn into a new life, carrying new meanings in his subsequent works.

Indeed, charcoal, graphite used in drawing, and diamonds all share a common carbon-based foundation, differing only in the density of their crystalline structure. Under the influence of high pressure, decomposing forms of carbon-based life (plants, animals) can transform into either charcoal, graphite, or diamonds. Thus, Artush Petrosyan's art once again brings us back to the idea of the unity of creativity, life, and the world, interconnected through the primacy of matter capable of becoming a spiritual substance.