French / english

With texts by art critic Anne Bonnin and Laurence Gateau
(director, Frac des Pays de la Loire).

208 pages, color illustrations

coédition Frac des Pays de la Loire, Hannibal Publishing

The expressive paintings of the Armenian artist Armen Eloyan (b. 1966) are as cute and seductive as they are repulsive. According to Eloyan, a good painting is like a good joke: the pieces must fit together.

Noted for his large-scale, irreverent paintings of anthropo- morphic animals and figures, he depicts absurd narratives in his darkly comic work. Though Eloyan doesn't define himself as a writer, his paintings tell sardonic, sometimes erotic stories. Inspired partly by cartoons and street art, as well as the European masters, his works are heavily impastoed with colorful paints and thick black outlines, adroitly balancing dark humor with a searing existential vision of a dystopic world.