Razvan Boar
Nicodim Gallery is pleased to present Razvan Boar’s second solo exhibition in Los Angeles, EZ VALLEY.
The culturally entrenched imagery of cartoons carry only the virtuosity of his technique—figures aren’t appropriated directly from any source, but evoke a mid-20th century miasma of late Modernism, the birth of Pop, and the golden age of advertising. The picture plane pulses with associations while isolating the formal pleasures of line, texture, and weight. Maybe spheres and triangles and what not are better suited for the study of form, but it’s a disingenuous pleasure, sucking all the lust out of the paint. Boar’s sense of volume is more zaftig than geometrical. The circumference of an ample butt, the asymptote of a lascivious smile, the curve of a tightly arched foot—each finds its final place among a thoughtfully curated smorgasbord of mediums, but begins as a small drawing, taken from sources buried in libraries and archives, both online and analog. Bauhaus faculty Paul Klee taught us that “drawing is taking a line for a walk”, but the lines birthed in Boar’s sketchbook are just the beginning of a transdimensional
boogie. The lounging ladies and looking lads, wild crocodiles and patient canines, and esoteric squiggles that stop just shy of becoming glyphs, all lie in wait to inhabit whatever material suits them best. Some images are stacked atop one another in filmy layers of transparent tracing paper, bonded with colorful splotches of oil and acrylic, wrinkled in some areas, and cut by thin strips of tinfoil and Scotch-tape in others. These collages are like a stack of pictures being DHL’d through history, and getting all dinged up in transit. Posterity is out. All the more reason to savor the pleasure of the text and texture in front of us. Other images become lithe aluminum sculptures that read as merchandising displays for the comeliness of line. The innocence of the subject matter—a contented dog, a larger-than-life foot with a perky daisy in its toes—skirts some of the more cynical subtexts of Pop’s art historical awareness while conjuring more enduring themes, like sex (it’s cool. Like I said, mom and dad are never coming back).
Excerpt from Twisting the Narrative Thread by Christina Catherine Martinez
In the current show, Boar’s sense of volume is more zaftig than geometrical. The circumference of an ample butt, the lascivious smile, the curve of a tightly arched foot—each finds its place among a thoughtfully curated smorgasbord of mediums.