ART CITIES:Los Angeles -Will Boone

Finding inspiration in the streets around where he lives, Will Boone repeats and abstracts his gleaned ideas to speak a visual language all of his own. His paintings riff on traditional sign writing, pushing the hand-painted alphabet into bold, dirty abstraction. Roughly painted black and red letterforms interlock and overlay, becoming strange occult symbols, which can’t quite be read.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo:  Archive

Will Boone for “Garage”, his first solo exhibition with David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, presents new paintings and sculptures installed in an environment constructed by the artist specially for the exhibition. As the title suggests, the installation evokes the cave-like space of a single-car garage, complete with top-mounted door, exposed framing, and open shelving. Installed in and around the garage are Boone’s iconic mask and flag paintings, model and figurine sculptures, and other works that demonstrate the broad range and far-reaching scope of his practice. Garages, often serve the houses to which they are attached as “subconscious” spaces, depositories for excess possessions and sites where messy activities–like fixing cars or making art–take place. Boone’s take on garage architecture includes an unfinished wall constructed from studs and an elongated wooden shelving unit. Boone creates an enclosure that exposes what it contains–a bed fashioned from a pool table; a free-standing, collage-covered red wall; and, installed on the shelves, a series of model-like sculptures of psychologically loaded places and scenes. Boone spent formative years in Texas designing flyers, t-shirts, and album artwork for underground bands and independent record labels. The processes of production and image selection he developed at that time have continued to shape his work. This is particularly evident in the series of mask paintings that is one of the major developments of this exhibition. Here Boone transforms a surreal array of icons from popular culture (Willie Nelson, the Texas state flag, a rattlesnake) into mask-like objects by re-imagining them with blank spots for eyes. He begins with altered photocopies of images, including photographs of actual novelty masks; these then become silkscreens used to apply paint to shaped panels. The entire process is done by hand so that it retains a connection to the irreverent and inherently democratic ethos of bootlegging. Born of the primitive psychological impulse to see faces in non-sentient objects, the paintings channel archaic power. But on material terms they also function as props whose clarity, flatness and recognizability makes them feel like signs, even if the viewer is never completely sure what they symbolize. The floor-based bronze sculptures that punctuate “Garage” locate broader symbolism in seemingly minor or pedestrian forms. Searching through hobby shops and flea markets, Boone sources plastic figurines he then enlarges, casts, and paints. In some cases, he works with fragments, creating permanent monuments to things that are usually discarded. A series of sculptures of capes, shown here for the first time, are examples of this tendency: their swooping folds, separated from the superheroes and villains to which they once belonged, become three-dimensional abstractions notable for their gravitas, graphic precision, and art historical resonance.

Info: David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Pl., Los Angeles, Duration: 2/6-7/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, http://davidkordanskygallery.com