John Boskovich

David Lewis is pleased to present four complete rooms – the Millennial Hallway, Rude Awakening Coffee Nook, Mess Hall, and the fabled Psycho Salon – from John Boskovich’s legendary Los Angeles home, studio, and conceptual theater, the self-titled “Boskostudio.” It is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York in over three decades, and the first New York recreation of his Huysmans-inspired turn to inwardness and interiority after the death of his partner, Stephen Earabino, in 1995.

"My studio/residence has never been in the genre of Installation Art as some have considered it... But is more akin to something like a John Cage or a Fluxus performance where there is a non-narrative structure with [a] beginning and an end point. The art lie[s] in the ensuing theatrics or as one might put ...its “highly fetishized” design concept recalls a Fas[s]binder set where no movie ever occurred... but nevertheless drama flourished abundantly...

The documentation exists only in the still photography of Toshi Yoshimi and in my memory and those that live, work, and play there...

The central conceptual conceits are schlock apocalypse and Millenarianism. There are sub-themes of ‘eclectic spirituality’ and faux multiculturalism. Boskostudio is intended as a liberalization of Huysmans[s’], À Rebours, the locus classics of French Decadence, a novel essentially about Interior Design and its central character’s increasing isolation and confinement. There are temporary display areas for independent pieces that are to be moved out and rearranged somewhere else."

– John Boskovich, 2002