Travis Boyer Born 1979 in Fort Worth, Texas, US Lives and works in New York City, US

Given that their subject is the sensual and spiritual interface, it is fitting that these works require our real presence. Boyer’s silk velvet works respond to our approach and movement with their inherent changes, and their texture, depth, and color result in a delightful diversity of surfaces within their materiality. In places, the velvet is pressed into a chrome sheen. Elsewhere, it is deepened into dark fields of dye. Their figurativeness belies the extent to which these works also take as their subject pure color and surface. Boyer’s paintings demand our participation, asking us to consider their continuities with the audience and the world, playing constantly in angle, light, and air—they are impossible to capture in photographs or replicate through AI, and, therefore, reward the viewer who engages with the work in real life. Moving near these paintings is akin to cruising: a mixture of desire and danger associated with the unexpected outcome.

Boyer invites us to witness an unpredictable encounter, a social ritual of carefully coded phrases, gestures, and glances.

Made of dye on silk velvet, their surfaces are soft and shimmery, the nap retaining the impression of the brush like the memory of a caress. There is no application of paint to be found. The surfaces of Boyers paintings are dyed but also coiffed and styled to create depth, opacity, texture and reflection. Their silk velvet surfaces look like hair coiffed and styled or plastered with punk colored hair dye accompanying brush strokes. Lines are dragged across the surface like liquid eyeliner, shapes are delicately fed with dye then mashed down or fluffed up.

The subjects of Boyer’s paintings are not remarkable in themselves—they are familiar specimens drawn from nature, keepsakes, people he loves, abstractions, or simply made up. Everyday subjects such as a pineapple or feathers assume the contrived glamour of drag performers. It is how they are painted that matters: anthropomorphism boils down to belonging: as individuals, couples, or small groups. These odd and certainly queer paintings, ultimately objects, extend their intimacy into the world. The untouchable surface begs to be touched. By viewing them we are allowed to inhabit a living world of mutuality and subconscious desire.

Travis Boyer (b. 1979 in Fort Worth, TX) lives and works in New York, NY. In 2012, Boyer graduated with an MFA from Bard College, NY. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions in several galleries and art centers in America and Europe: Noon Projects, Los Angeles (2023); Signal Gallery, New York (2021); False Flag, New York (2019); Hello Project Gallery, Houston (2015); Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York (2014); Studio 17, Stavanger, Norway (2014); Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam (2013). In 2021, he took part in the Texas Biennal. He had residencies at Nesflaten Skule, Suldal, Norway (2015); and at the Shandaken Project, Shandaken, New York (2012) among others. His works are in the collection of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire, all in the US.