WILL BOONE
2018-10-15Will Boone has become recognized for paintings, sculptures, and ambitious installations that draw content from sources outside of art historical contexts. He is particularly interested in subcultures and images associated with the broader American social landscape; these include punk music, bar culture, the automotive industry, horror movies, cattle ranching, and conspiracy theories. Boone mines these sources for iconic forms, borrowing their methodologies and technical processes to render objects full of graphic power and remarkable physicality.
Prominently featured in this exhibition are a group of large-scale Mask paintings in which Boone converts images of emblematic objects and people into imposing, mask-like forms by introducing blank spots that stand in for their eyes. The array of images is as varied as it is surreal, with a milk carton, a Goodyear tire, a playing card, Frankenstein, and a Doberman Pinscher all making appearances. On the one hand, these are exercises in anthropomorphism writ large–Boone channels the instinctual human desire to see faces in everything, as well as the psychedelic, animistic state of seeing a living soul in an inanimate form. But they are also monumental expressions of design, printing, and painting techniques the artist has used since his youth, when he regularly designed posters and t-shirts for punk bands.
Opposite – Bad Milk, 2018
Exhibition runs through to November 24th, 2018
Galerie Patrick Seguin
5 rue des Taillandiers
75011 Paris
France
