The Cafesjian Center for the Arts Announces the Closure of the Exhibition Doug Argue: Chicken Paintings

March 27, 2014 The Cafesjian Center for the Arts (CCA) announces the closure of the exhibition Doug Argue: Chicken Paintings on March 30, 2014. The admission to the exhibition in CCA’s Eagle Gallery will be free of charge from March 27- 30.

The Untitled chicken painting and the three chicken portraits from the Gerard L. Cafesjian Collection impress with their overwhelming scale and meticulous execution. The Chicken Painting which took the artist two years to complete is all imaginary, prompted by a short story of Franz Kafka. Before arriving in Armenia, the Chicken Painting was a major public attraction at the Weisman Art Museum, after Gerard Cafesjian lent the work to the University of Minnesota in 1995.


A chicken factory… or an ecological indictment on growing consumerism with 50 billion chickens raised annually as a source of food… or a social commentary on the increasing alienation of humans caged in their virtual cubes?

Doug Argue expands the chicken concept, creating a series of individualized personalities of chickens, which with their cockeyed, dizzy expressions appear as enigmas or anonymous historical portraits. Here, the most overlooked animals in the world become “an equivalent of a big battle expressing an important shift in human culture”, initially envisioned by the artist.

Doug Argue was born in 1962 in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His works are included in numerous public collections, including the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation. In 2009, he was awarded with the Artist of the Year by the London Creative Competition. Argue has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Prix De Rome, a Bush Foundation Fellowship, and a PollockKrasner Foundation Grant. Doug Argue currently resides in New York City.