03.31.2023
Travis Boyer
M.T.W.T.F.S.S.
Seven Sumptuous paintings on silk velvet
NOON Projects is honoured to announce the first Los Angeles solo exhibition of artist Travis Boyer. Known for creating spine-tingling paintings made with dye on silk velvet through a meticulous signature approach where impasto, reflection, and stain are achieved through careful manipulation of the velvet substrate, MTWTFSS offers one such unique painting for each day of the week.
Guided by a set of personal parameters from which each painting is deployed, Boyer began with a subject familiar to him, Mushrooms, and alliteratively assigned that painting as: Mushroom, Monday. Over several months this rubric expanded to Thistles, Willows, Tomatoes, Fountains, Stars, and Sand Dollars, each charged with Boyers’ unique style that reconciles kitsch and camp with the eternal. The result is a seven part ecology of intimate paintings that rest between abstraction and figuration, drawing the viewer into a world both familiar and preternatural.
There is little to compare between Boyers’ velvet paintings and popular black velvet paintings of the late mid 20th century, however the artist does reach towards a variety of pop culture references in generating the work. Methods of hair and makeup styling–coiffing the surface with a blow dryer, qualities of liquid eyeliner, dry brush contouring, and spit curls freely enter his painting vocabulary.
In an interview with Los Angeles based actor Jason Greene AKA Freckle, Boyer reveals how as a young queer kid growing up in Texas, seeing the image of Christina Applegate in a crushed velvet dress on the popular TV series Married with Children initiated a love for velvet.
“Seeing 16 year old (Applegate) descending the staircase of that dingy house/set in her red crushed velvet dress- looked so contrasting and stunning, when my work is really successful, that's the effect it has.”
Exhibition
March 31 – May 6, 2023
Preview: Thursday, March 30, 6–8pm
Opening Reception: Friday, March 31, 6–9pm
March 31 – May 6, 2023
Preview: Thursday, March 30, 6–8pm
Opening Reception: Friday, March 31, 6–9pm