Coastal Signs - Arena

Anto Yeldezian
Arena
31 January - 1 March 2025

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
Wall Games, 2024
acrylic paint and spray on canvas
1400 x 1900mm

Anto Yeldezian
Wall Games (detail), 2024
acrylic paint and spray on canvas
1400 x 1900mm

Anto Yeldezian
Spade and Neutered, 2024
oil, oil pastels, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
400 x 600mm

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
The Rule of Thirds, 2024
acrylic paint and marker on canvas
1300 x 1750mm

Anto Yeldezian
The Rule of Thirds (detail), 2024
acrylic paint and marker on canvas
1300 x 1750mm

Anto Yeldezian
Outliersss, 2025
acrylic and inkjet newsprint on wood panel
400 x 500mm

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
L’agenda, 2025
acrylic and inkjet newsprint on wood panel
400 x 500mm

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
Civilisation (The Game), 2024
acrylic, acrylic spray-paint, permanent marker on canvas
1680 x 2100mm

Anto Yeldezian
No Players Online (detail), 2024
oil and acrylic on canvas
1250 x 1800mm

Anto Yeldezian
No Players Online, 2024
oil and acrylic on canvas
1250 x 1800mm

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
Don’t Welcome Me Mat, 2025
acrylic, spray enamel, charcoal, soft pastel and wax crayon on canvas sheet
1600 x 2700mm

Anto Yeldezian
Don’t Welcome Me Mat (detail), 2025
acrylic, spray enamel, charcoal, soft pastel and wax crayon on canvas sheet
1600 x 2700mm

Anto Yeldezian
Arena, 2025
installation view: Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland

Anto Yeldezian
Across Words, 2025
silk screen emulsion, acrylic, inkjet newsprint on wood panel
360 x 400mm

Coastal Signs is pleased to present our first show of the year; Arena, a solo exhibition of new work by Anto Yeldezian.  

To play a game, whether literal or psychological, by employing strategy or luck, is to adhere to a set of rules. The role of the image in constructing our collective, or disparate, narratives of nation are paramount to Yeldezian. The game, or painting, sets about to find the pattern, within an infinite set of possible rules... (Jo Bragg, Art Monthly Australia, Summer 24/25)

In Anto Yeldezian's paintings images from a myriad of sources are layered on top of one another and synthesized, very adeptly, into painterly tableau. The works in Arena are, as the title suggests, often organised around game boards – such as Snakes & Ladders and Noughts & Crosses – and representations of contested territories, both fictional and otherwise. In one large painting a map of Middle Earth is discernible under multiple grids of information, while in another, the source material is arranged in the squares of a chess board.

In Monument Valley, Yeldezian’s previous solo exhibition, paintings featured images from the middle east, in particular the Gulf Wars, that have since been circulated so widely they are instantly recognisable. In Arena the images from the middle east are both more specific and more evasive. Most images of conflict in Arena are sourced from a US military game developed after the second gulf war called Virtual Iraq. Based on a popular video game, Full Spectrum Warrior, Virtual Iraq is used for training, and to help soliders with combat trauma via exposure therapy. Other, very similar-looking images, are sourced from the user interfaces of drones, that have been designed to replicate that of the video game.

It is rare that a single image can be read in isolation in Yeldezian’s paintings; they bleed into one another, distorting and concealing information, pulling in and out of focus. Paint is applied in sheer but brightly coloured layers, together with sketchy linework and shadowy frottage, sometimes punctured by day-glo stencils. Don’t Welcome Me Mat (2024), a work painted directly onto a loose hanging drop-cloth, functions like collage with space for the eye to journey over the bright dots of a twister board, palm trees, cartoon snakes, bullet holes, and a shroud-like figure of Warhol’s cowboy. In no players online (2024) multiple grids overlap, including the stars and stripes and a supersize game of tic tac toe. The over-loaded image verges on oblivion, the result of a seemingly manic effort to reconcile the medium with it’s subject matter.

Anto Yeldezian (b. 1990) is a Tāmaki Makaurau based artist of Armenian heritage. He holds an MArch from the University of Auckland and completed his MFA at Elam in 2023. Recent exhibitions include: Monument Valley, Coastal Signs, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2023); Nova, Sumer, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2023), Bottega Pradada, Sanc Gallery Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland (2022), Cruel Optimism, Artspace Aotearoa, Auckland (2021).