Will Boone “Sea Wall”

Karma

[Image: Will Boone "Storm Window" (2017) Resin, enamel, acrylic and nylon flag on canvas, 72 x 54 in.]

This event has ended.

Karma presents an exhibition of new paintings by Will Boone. Continuing the use of fragments of language, Boone has developed a new body of work which maintains a vocabulary of fractured letter forms while including new materials, techniques and gestures.

Symbols and images are broken up, further obscured. The distinctions between characters are much more difficult to decipher and the physical progress of painting is much more apparent.

Through this constant reworking we perceive tension: the world of objects—cultural, sentimental or otherwise—is forever being prompted while those same associations are constantly being smudged away by the painterly process. The traditional mechanics of painting—gestural marks, loose drippings, geometric forms and representational images—underscore its tropes in historical precedents and present possibilities.

Influenced by the landscape and conditions of the Gulf Coast, the exhibition is a work of social anthropology and clues to Boone himself. He recalls a boy using a t-shirt to pick up a dead jellyfish on the beach. Years later, the boy would lie not far from the where he found the jellyfish. There’s gritty tar in the sand and it gets on your feet if you take off your shoes, so you swim with your shoes on. The water is warm and dark and the waves are loud at night. The economy is based on commercial shrimping, regional tourism, and offshore oil rigs. The weather is unpredictable. A hurricane can blow in and destroy every structure, leaving trails of flayed roofs, ripped billboards, and organic detritus.