Armen Eloyan artwork • painting • for sale Untitled

Armenian artist Armen Eloyan, artist-in-residence at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten Amsterdam (Rijksakademie of Fine Arts) from 2004 to 2005, fled Armenia in 1997. His early work was partly inspired by cartoons and street art featuring recognizable figures from the world of Walt Disney, as well as great masters of European painting. Using thick layers of paint in a colorful palette and bold black contours, he paints landscapes, raw, mysterious texts, and masochistic figures. Because he personally experienced oppression, the subjects in his work often speak of a terrifying, cruel world, which he nevertheless depicts in an attractive style. This can be confrontational for the viewer, as it both attracts and repels. This confrontation and contradiction still resonates in his most recent drawings, in which figures are disrupted by vulgar or insulting texts and slogans. With the absurd world that Armen Eloyan conjures, he confronts the viewer with the sadness of human existence, the banality of power, and the transience of existence: 'I paint aggression and pain because I'm fascinated by the way people affirm their existence through cruelty. The image of nature also plays an important role in my work. The earth and the forests are silent and eternal.'