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“In The Video Story […] fiction and reality seem to mesh into one another, and the biographical verges on the imaginary; words take on a new meaning, and facts are fictionalized. Here, images do not merely reproduce reality; rather, they create their own. These works’ textual fabric shrouds them with a confessional layer; the stories that unfold therein gain a life of their own, ultimately exposing their makers’ misdemeanors. This revelation, drenched in intimacy, adulterates everything that surrounds it. […] Like a snake shedding its skin, Avakian’s depiction of reality in The Video Story turns it into an entity for which the image acts as a temporary cloak. [The] work bring[s] art back to its most primordial iteration through fiction. For art does not simply emulate reality; it outplays it, creating a reality of its own and crossing to another realm.”