Introduction

Armenian painter Armen Eloyan has swathed ‘figuration-as-we-know-it’ in a loud and greasy perverse painterly realm, carrying the viewer towards that last grain of bare and violent vulgarity, which one sometimes - in a horrifying unguarded moment - recognizes in oneself. The act of painting with the whole body - rather than with the wrist alone - is not only a manner of expression but it becomes a risky enterprise of dangerous yet funny acrobatics, as if one were running in too big shoes. The artist devotes himself to pictorial research with what is for many a touching and authentic dedication but, balancing between an apparent unpredictability and purposefulness, his large-scale pictures are often based on the conscious study of the colour scheme and composition of constructivist examples. For his motifs Armen Eloyan often turns to folk-art and folklore, basing his paintings at times on 19th century Eastern European woodcuts and embroidery with representations of fairy-tales and stories, or on animation movies, comic strips and other popular art forms. As in an oral tradition, the digested and assimilated references suggest a domain of received stories and ideas.

The Armenian, Armen Eloyan (born 1966), has lived and worked in Amsterdam and Zurich. Expressive paintings with reference to cartoons and fairy tales, dark but also humorous.Solo-exhibitions at Timothy Taylor Gallery (London 2021, 2008), Parasol Unit (London 2007), Galerie Bob van Orsouw (Zurich 2006).