Armen Eloyan: C.R.P. paintings and related drawings

Tim Van Laere Gallery presents its fourth solo exhibition by Armen Eloyan; C.R.P. paintings and related drawings. “C.R.P.” stands for “Cartoon Related Painting.”

These new series of works continue Armen’s interest in American and Western culture—especially with a great fascination with cartoons and George Herriman’s daily comic strips, whose playful atmosphere he adopted to his work. In recent years, Eloyan has also sought more abstraction in his works, where the works represent a lexicon without words, like a numerical system. Like the panoramic paintings of abstract-expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, the syntax of forms in the series expresses an emotional charge and spiritual power independent of language. In this new series of paintings, he combines both his signature figurative satire and abstraction. His gestural approach, driven by great zest, gives off a remarkable energy that generates a strong emotional charge. This new series of paintings attest to this by the way the artist’s arm, as if in a state of trance, produces an exciting and frenzied repertoire of Disney characters that merge into the background of the paintings. However, his Disney figures are completely stripped of their innocence, thus Eloyan refers to our dystopian world and our human nature with our more grotesque and animalistic sides as well.

Armen Eloyan (b. 1966 Yerevan, Armenia) lives and works in Zurich. His work has been exhibited internationally with solo shows at Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; Kunstparterre, Munich; Passerelle Centra d’Art Contemporain, Brest; Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, St Gallen; Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris; and Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London. His work is part of public collections such as M HKA, Antwerp; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; collection AMC, Amsterdam; The Zhiguan Museum, Beijing; Museum of Contemporary Art, Den Haag; Deutsche Bank Collection, London; The Aurora Museum, Shanghai; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato; Collection University of Maine, USA; KUNSTPARTERRE, Munich; Olbricht Collection, Germany; By Art Matters, Hangzhou among others.