PETER FRANK Senior curator at the Riverside Art Museum, art critic for Angeleno Magazine and the L.A. Weekly, and past editor Visions art quarterly, and art critic for the Village Voice and the SOHO weekly news in N.Y.
Casting the figure in bronze is an act that ties the sculptor to an age-old tradition. But Raffi Tokatlian's sculptures flout tradition at every turn.
To comprehend a work of his you must invariably see it from several angles.
But it must be emphasized that these creatures of Tokatlian's imagination, fraught with symbolic, religious, mythological, and more arcane resonance, delirious in the knowledge that their tribulations are part of a greater lesson.
