Vicious Circle
And I repeat,
A world that eats the inedible, again and again, day and night,
To realize its meanness -
At this point,
Can only
Shut its mouth.
(Antonin Artaud, Van Gogh - the Man Suicided by Society)

As always with Boyan the painting is personal. Personal in the most concrete way, like the used, squashed filter of a Marlboro cigarette. Personal in the most specific way, as a reflection of his physical, mental and emotional state- in a way, his human state- in a character and a scene: in a story. Personal in the overwhelming (and lonely) way, in that whatever he has to say, he paints. (and nothing else). And finally, personal in a way of necessity, because if it isn't there's no point for anything, particularly art.

Two years since his return to the burden of existence in Israel, nearly a year into the messiacal delusion, the racist nationalism, the institutionalized crime, this may be Boyan's most personal and political exhibition to date.

Fear precedes existence

Man, as we personally know, gets thrown into and out of existence. Not by his own willing. Always arriving late to what is already there, forever early to leave that will go on after him. Drowned in the noise of his life surrounded by people who light the darkness of his loneliness. In the midst of it, with the little time he has, the man is required to act against forces and systems bigger and stronger than him. Older than him. He's required to be a (super)hero, at the very least the hero of his own life. Struggling and tackling, overcoming, falling and rising again. Looking for company and recognition. Looking for his place. Asking that his life and his actions meet others, will be liked and accepted, will bring joy. 'Hoping that his death won't be more meaningful than his life'. For existence precedes essence.

And still, over a hundred years that our lives and actions exist in the shade of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie: the regulator of the convenient, honest life, worthy of praise and show. Exist under the light of a hedonistic, atrophied, elitist bureaucracy, a present and indifferent observer of violence from behind glass, that derives pleasure from and holds sacred the acts of promiscuity and horror in the name of the Cross and the Moral (and religion). Not for nothing recognized … when observing Van Gogh, the …

And much like nature reflected the power of wisdom, so does the human environment reflect the power of urges and desires. The power of repetition and useless habits. The power of the suspended action of an image and a character. These are Boyan's heroes, who fight demons, carry pain from the deep, wrapped in halos of darkness like warriors in the background, running upwards and against the stream. For those heroes and for what surrounds them, fear precedes existence. For them the fracture- the cut between the pictures of life they post online- is present and painful and asking to be mended.

The transparent glass ('the material of modernism') that allows us and the world to be 'authentic images'- ones you can deny and justify alternatively, ones that at the end of the day appeal the very feeling of existence- is replaced with face, flesh, bodies, as if they've accepted their roles as masks. A merge of laughter and horror, desperation and hope, enjoyment and pain, involvement and indifference. This theatricality that becomes literal, becomes a ground for (figurative) action that is direct, honest, personal. One that separates the facts of life and the idea of existence. One that simply pursues contact and submission. Without losing style. As if rising to street level in favor of an unusual activity, groundbreaking, violent. In favor of change and liberation as a way of life.

Pathos and patheticness

In another time, not so long ago, Boyan used the space of the painting as a living habitat for his characters. Theatrical, cinematic spaces. Worlds built from fantasy, rich with bold colors, with eye-catching details. Worlds full of desire and instinct, violence and dark, cultured pleasure. Painting that grasps the gushing winds of youth, to awaken imagination from its slumber. For in the basis of life- I want to say, in the basis of Boyan's paintings- is action: the source of comfort and hope. A movement that traps time and converts into space. A movement that pins action in its potential condition - crucial – to be world changing. The action and movement are trademarks of 'storytellers', and those of Boyan are some of the most distinguished, twisted and rich amongst them. Human to the point of pain, precise to the point of judgment.

Today it seems that Boyan's paintings work to bridge the gap between mythos and everyday life. When an individual with the strength of spirit became a CEO and an entrepreneur (social, of course), when life in a movie became a story board, the decision lies with repetition, insistence, persistence. With the exposed cruelty of our lives, the background detaches and retreats, left behind at the bottom of the stairs rising from the tunnels of soul, the detail becomes abstract, the color dull, the style simple and unsophisticated. And still present, like graffiti on a wall, like a frozen movement, like a frame repeating itself. Like the power of rage, held at bay in our body. Like an action that no longer fears mistake. Like a motif of a desperate theme, having abandoned its subject. Until at last only the hero remains. The hero and his emissary, the hero in his stride, the hero- as a character in an old elections poster, full of promises and empty of content- anchored to the ground with the weight of his negligence, holding a flare of hope in his head full of hair, in his gaze. In front of the shallowness of the spirit and the craseness of taste that shackle the person to a life of struggle and survival (as a toxic pleasure) remain the forces of attraction and life of the painting. Remains the power to make up, to tell a story, and to awaken the spirit to greatness.

As always Boyan's painting traps us in the arena of the eternal struggle between existence and meaning, between instinct and creation. And as always Boyan's paintings awaken the suspense and anxiety that accompany the meeting of the personal and social. To the echoing between image and character, between lust and initiative. But this time it seems that the painting settles at the point in which everything occaisonaly loses grip of reality, everything is (not) understood, everything is (too) generic. This time it seems that Boyan's paintings accompany the man in his eternal struggle against the institutions themselves, those which are trusted with the order of social and cultural mechanisms. In the struggle of man for his existence as man. In the struggle of a piece of art to be instinctual, and of a gesture to be intimate. To emote. This time the painting settles in the lowest point, the most painful one, the most ambivalent one of the painting/ human existence. In the visceral point of view on the surface, in front of the directness and necessity that varies the impression. Still propelled by the same desire toward a life of enjoyment, still contemplating the same tortured soul that requests testimony for its existence, Boyan's painting reminds us that in the 'evil cycle' of the (creative) action, trapped between pathos and patheticness, the time has come to put on a show- to demonstrate- in the name of the theatre of the glorious and beautiful human life that culture can offer us.

This is not a space of comfort. Not now.

These are paintings of a bitter sobriety, of harrowing persistence, of an accumulative effect- of a (recurring) submission: being Arthur.

- Menahem Goldenberg, October 2023