Eozen Agopian | Overcrossing

High Noon is pleased to present Eozen Agopian’s solo debut with the gallery, Overcrossing. An artist of Armenian descent born in Athens, Greece, Agopian’s multimedia compositions reverse traditional spatial relationships while precariously constructing invented— yet conceivable— liminal spaces through a complex vocabulary of layering. Intuitively drawing via hand-embroidered thread, sourced fabrics, acrylic and oil paint, her newest exhibition brings together large and small enigmatic works to explore conceptual and textural contrasts between dimensional filters.

 

In Athens, Agopian grew up learning traditional needle point within a community of her peers and continues to activate this craft within her studio practice: ”As a young girl growing up in Greece, needle work was an activity that kept us busy in the late afternoons. That was my first experience with canvas and I was fascinated by the cleanness, vibrancy, and variety of the colors of thread. However, I would often get tired of the repetitive images and motifs presented by traditional needlepoint and move to the margins of the canvas where I saw my own abstract images freely.”

 

Akin to sacred geometry and multidimensional thinking, Agopian’s work organically automates interplay between her polychromatic surfaces, conjuring tension between remote cosmic planes. In May to July (2022), layered washes of subdued canary yellow and cerulean blue splash and splatter the center aggregate of a raw linen surface. Subtle accompaniments of yellow ochre strike surrounding patches of wide and whimsical forest green strokes. Suspended fragments of fabric that are irregularly bound to the open compositional body absorb ambient light while penetrative silk lines reflect it in concentric and linear rhythms.

 

By contrast, Aneza in Light (2022) distills Agopian’s methodological paradigms within a significantly more refined ratio. Her dramatic shifts in scale beckon intimate examinations, playing off the micro vs. macro sensibility of her structures. Colors and fabrics collect in an illustrative anticenter, inviting the viewer to engage the sensitivity of an instinctively reassembled devolving grid.

 

Taken as a whole, Agopian’s assemblage collapses traditional fine art techniques while materially addressing the craft of needle point within abstraction. She says, “I know it’s finished when I feel that it exists somewhere in the Universe.”

 

— Austin Casebolt

 

Eozen Agopian received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Pratt Institute, N.Y. in 1993; a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hunter College,N.Y. in 1989; and an Associate Degree in Graphic Design from F.I.T, N.Y. in 1987. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in Greece, France, Russia, Italy, Germany, China and the United States. Notable solo shows include “Unfold”, Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, Athens, (2019); “The Fabric of Time”, Consulate General of Greece in New York, (2018); “Persistent Dichotomies”, Fox Gallery NYC, (2017); “Traverse”, Eleftheria Tseliou Gallery, (2015); “Paintings and Works on paper”, Michael Walls Gallery, New York, (1993). Notable gallery shows include Shiva Gallery, John Jay College, Lesley Heller Workspace, WhiteBox Harlem, Consulate General of France in New York, AAW Gallery in Beijing, Freud’s Dream Museum in St. Petersburg, Hellenic American Union in Athens, State Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece, Museum of Contemporary Art in Greece, and the Museum of Byzantine Culture in Greece. Agopian is an alumnus of the Triangle Arts Workshop and the Triangle Arts Residency. The summer of 2019, she was awarded a studio on Governors Island, and in the spring of the same year she was offered invitation to Officinenove associazione Culturale in Rome. Presently, she is a resident artist of Project Studio at PS122 in the LES.

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Two Coats of Paint | Multi-dimensional: Eozen Agopian's string paintings by Lisa Taliano