Armen Eloyan: Green Grass
Timothy Taylor, New York
14 March — 20 April 2024
Green Grass 5 (detail), 2023
Oil on linen, 53 ⅛ × 59 ¼ in. (134.9 × 150.5 cm)
© Armen Eloyan
Timothy Taylor presents Green Grass, an exhibition of new paintings by Armen Eloyan in New York. This presentation, the artist’s eighth with the gallery, features eight canvases that exemplify his integration of wry, cartoon-related imagery and anarchic abstraction.
Armen Eloyan’s recent paintings teem with explosive energy; each mark recalls the vigorous physicality of the artist’s process. Eloyan works intuitively and fiercely, generating dense fields of abstraction characterized by collisions and contaminations of gesture and form. His engagement with color and nuanced use of a cartoon illustrator’s line trace back from Willem de Kooning to Arshile Gorky, whose work likewise played with pastiche, imitation, and an authentic exploration of the terms of painting. Across the works on view in Green Grass are suggestions of imagery—in particular, the head of a dog that simultaneously recalls Disney’s Pluto, George Herriman’s comics, and the rabbit-duck illusion used in psychology to query aspects of perception and interpretation. This head recurs, often in profile; its eyes—stimulated, vertical ovals—are mirrored by the creature’s chiclet teeth and by various echoing loop forms that suggest flowers in places and phalluses in others. Another motif threads through the paintings: outstretched arms that seem to gesture wildly. Armen Eloyan builds up a visual language through repetition and intuitive mark-making, warping and obscuring his figuration with volatile pictorial events.
Verdant green hues connect the canvases on view, seemingly citing the chaotic compositions in nature. In some canvases, luminous chartreuse evokes manicured grass, and in others, umbral tangles of mulchy green reads like thick woodland. Armen Eloyan is interested in the way formal elements respond to each other, the way a dog head, for example, will signify differently when placed among varied environments. With these heavily worked canvases, he decontextualizes familiar figures, offering up a satirical yet impassioned reflection on questions of influence, appropriation, and presentation.
ARMEN ELOYAN
Armen Eloyan (b. 1966, Yerevan, Armenia) is a Zurich-based figurative painter and sculptor whose absurdist work hints at sinister narratives. Eloyan’s practice is informed by his childhood in Soviet controlled Armenia and by years working as a studio assistant to the renowned Armenian animator Robert Sahakyants. This early exposure to animation would leave its mark on the artist’s vernacular, and Armen Eloyan is now best known for heavily impastoed paintings populated by cartoon figures lifted from comics and other popular illustrations. The artist’s instantly recognizable figures also make appearances in cast bronze sculptures. “Cartoons parody the culture; they reflect it in a way that’s entertaining but also profound,” Armen Eloyan has said of his lifelong fascination. “How humans behave like animals sometimes—how ridiculous politics can be.”
Armen Eloyan has mounted solo exhibitions internationally, at such venues as Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France; Kunstparterre, Munich; Passerelle Centre d'Art Contemporain, Brest, France; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; and Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London. His work resides in the collections of Frac des Pays de la Loire; Kunstparterre; M HKA, Antwerp; AMC Collection, Amsterdam; Zhiguan Museum of Fine Art, Beijing; Kunstmuseum, The Hague, Netherlands; Deutsche Bank Collection, London; Aurora Museum, Shanghai; Centro Pecci, Prato, Italy; University of Maine Museum of Art, Bangor, Maine; Olbricht Collection, Cologne; By Art Matters, Hangzhou, China; among others.
TIMOTHY TAYLOR
74 Leonard Street, New York, NY 10013
