Travis Boyer: Twoness

Galerie Peter Kilchmann

Rue des Arquebusiers, Paris

Travis Boyer

May 25 - July 6, 2024

Opening: Friday, May 24, 6 - 8 pm

11-13, Rue des Arquebusiers, Paris

Project Space

Galerie Peter Kilchmann is thrilled to present Twoness, the first solo exhibition in Europe of American artist Travis Boyer (b. 1979 in Fort Worth, Texas. Lives and works in New York City). The paired subjects (couples) of Travis Boyer’s work in Twoness are all engaged in momentous conversations. Each of the nine panels (painted dye on silk velvet, framed in unique chameleon-color finished wood) on view seems to occur at a crucial moment of collision, self-definition, or reconciliation between the two. 

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 myriad ways of manipulating 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 and, therefore, reward the viewer who engages with the work in real life. 

According to the artist, his paintings are a generous meditation on the foundational question of ‘The One and The Many’. Boyer locates his paintings in the sensual and often sexual context, where we feel this problem most deeply. The works posit ‘twoness’ as a possibility and a drama. For instance, the lobsters in one of the paintings lay in two separate universes, though they are touching each other. Will the one ever understand what it is to be flat on one’s back, detailed and translucent? Will the other ever escape a certain narcissism? Their shapes are mirrors, and yet there is also tension in the way they inhabit Boyer’s velvet. Is the world a unity or a plurality? If these works had an answer to these questions, it might be that the world must be two things at once.

These odd and certainly queer pairings who are, ultimately, objects extend their intimacy into the world. By viewing them we are allowed to inhabit a living world of mutually brushing, pleasured, and displeasured velvet. 

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. 

For further information please contact: Marina Hinkens (marina@peterkilchmann.com) or Audrey Turenne (audrey@peterkilchmann.com).