Travis Boyer

False Flag is pleased to present Amongus, a new series of dye-on-velvet paintings by Travis Boyer.

Rather than still lifes or documentation, these lush works explore the eros of observation and drawing through a shared point of reference: the intimate lives of mushrooms. The tactile silk velvet surfaces hold the same delicate, easily crushed tension as the underside gills of mushrooms. Boyer finds opportunity in this fragillity to address fluid desire - bodies that are poised in both specific and metaphorical gestures. The parallax effect of each surface denies a fixed, strictly frontal interpretation. Unfolding like mushroom blooms across a forest floor, the paintings connect the mysterious lines of communication in the fungi kingdom to queer intuition and the notion of ‘gaydar’: their puffs of spores message each other, traveling and intoxicating their environment, opening up an awareness of desire.

Mycology - the study of mushrooms - has played a role in broader public discourse as a novel means to work through collective problems of environmental and economic collapse. Likewise, there is a timley reemergence of psychoactive mushrooms for use in medical therapy. Boyer makes the pragmatic personal, considering mycology’s gentle adjacency to his work as a New York City public tree pruner and palliative care advocate. This inward mycellial bloom invites the viewer to consider: is there a fungus amongus?

Amongus is Travis Boyer ’s first solo presentation at False Flag.

Travis Boyer lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work is in the collections of the High Museum, Atlanta; the Portland Museum of Art, Maine; the Hood Museum of Art; and Colby College Museum of Art. He has exhibited at the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; The Muse Beaux-Arts, Paris; Confort Moderne, Poitiers; and has performed at New Museum, New York; Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. He has shown at Participant Inc, New York; Fons Welters, Amsterdam; Signal Gallery, Brooklyn; Johannes Vogt, New York; John Connelley Presents, New York; and Studio 17, Stavanger, Norway, among others. Boyer has been awarded various grants and residencies, including the Fire Island Artist Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park, Shandaken Projects, and Frida Hansen Hus.