“All of those painters were horny”

Horny Season, Armen Eloyan

From Bidoun:

Would you say your paintings are dark at all?
“I don’t think so.”

Talking to Armen Eloyan, in spite of his gorgeous voice, can be taxing. He is exceedingly terse, mostly answering questions in combinations of one, two, three, or four words. Five if you discount contractions. When you lead him down a narrow path, he’ll inevitably cut you off.

What of politics?
“I am an anarchist.”

Do you think people laugh when they see your paintings?
“I don’t care.”

Is it a good thing if they do?
“I don’t know.”

…

So why is a good painting like a joke?
“The pieces have to come together.”

Yes?
“Timing matters, too.”

In Horny Season, a painting from 2008, a goofy dog (but not Goofy the dog-man) reclines in a garden in a scene that seems to, in sideways fashion, evoke the lush gardens of Monet. The gratuitous shrubbery is mildly sexual — the birds and the bees, the prospect of deflowering. “All of those painters were horny,” says the artist, matter-of-factly. “It’s so obvious.”

Like most of Eloyan’s works, Horny Season takes cultural references from the world around us — this time impressionist painting — as its point of departure. The paintings’ dramaturgy is in turn drawn from the world of cinema, evoking the strange alchemy of forces that make for the most powerful kind of cine-emotive effect. Hence, we witness a litany of emotionally fraught, if not familiar, scenes: the angst-ridden artist, the daydream, the stilted love affair, the professional failure.