Armen Eloyan: Two feet in one shoe

Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art is pleased to present Two feet in one shoe: Armen Eloyan, the first solo exhibition of Eloyan’s paintings in a UK institution.

Armen Eloyan’s paintings adeptly play out an apocalyptic fantasy world of anxiety, brutality, sexuality and the grotesque with the contradictory light-heartedness of a cartoon. His theatrical scenes explore the fragility of life as well as the boundaries separating security from chaos, comedy from violence and pleasure from cruelty.

Crucially Eloyan’s strikingly gestural paintings use both humour and horror in a manner that engages him emotionally, mentally and physically. The brash, attractive, dark colours Eloyan employs collide and coexist whilst unsettling any sense of harmony in the work.

The instinctive approach Eloyan applies to his painting draws on his emotional bond to an array of collective and personal experiences. Significantly these are rooted in his early years in Yerevan, Armenia yet also claim reference to propaganda, art history, cinema, television and popular music. Clearly there is a narrative element in Eloyan’s work however this is disturbingly disrupted by a sense of desolation and anxiety.

Two feet in one shoe is an exhibition imbued with Eloyan’s verve, vigor and desire to celebrate the act of painting. His intuitive relationship to painting is infused with a need to delve beneath the layers of pure aesthetic and get to the crux with what is messy, foul and discordant.

Two feet in one shoe: Armen Eloyan is accompanied by a full-colour catalogue with essays by Ziba de Weck Ardalan and Philippe Pirotte.