Kai Lin Art’s “Objects 2,” the gallery’s second annual juried exhibition of three-dimensional work, closes July 17, capping a show that gathered 17 contemporary artists from across the Southeast and beyond, including: David Carlton, Johnny Cohen, DL Warfield, Santi Saucedo, Lars Finderup, Lowkey Lyss, Rich Stevens, Heather Deyling, Christopher Choi, John Roberts, Sean Berube, Corrina Sephora, Dillan Ladner, Susan Krause, Valentin Sivyakov, and Allen Peterson & Hanna Newman.
The exhibition opened with a reception on June 5 and has spent the weeks since making the case for sculpture and relief work as some of the most versatile mediums in contemporary art.
Alongside the juried show, Kai Lin Art tapped its resident mixed media artist, Marc Boyson, to debut new work of his own. Boyson is a retired arts educator, a former Associate Professor of Fine Art at Southern Adventist University’s School of Visual Art & Design in Collegedale, Tennessee. His personal practice traces the tracks of everyday movement across works on paper, projection, murals, sound and ceramics. He’s held solo exhibitions at the Association for Visual Arts in Chattanooga and the John C. Williams Gallery in Collegedale.
For “Objects 2,” Boyson unveiled new work that expands his exploration of memory and records. He shares the story behind it here.
Your work traces commutes through memory, invention and GPS records. How does that translate into the specific objects you’re showing in ‘Objects 2’?
I have 11 works that explore the idea of the trace through different media and visual representations. I’ve been using the crescent and the circle as a visual representation of the lunar cycle for the last four years. They symbolize the stages of the lunar cycle that humanity has used to keep as a record of time and seasons throughout its existence.
You move between works on paper, projection, murals, sound and ceramics. Why did the combination of mediums for this new piece feel right?
I have three pieces that are on laser-etched wood. These works are the last remaining pieces from a previous phase of my art practice, in which a CNC laser was used to fabricate the work. I have a set of seven new pieces that are all on canvas. They are a new departure for my visual practice. Allowing an immediacy in the creation of the work in which all the visible media and layers of mark-making can be seen. Where the wood pieces were physically tactile, the new pieces are visually ‘tactile.’
Was this piece already underway in your studio, or did the exhibition itself prompt you to make new work?
The “Objects 2″ exhibition presented an opportunity to present work that I had created on a smaller scale, to be realized at a larger scale. The immediacy of working with the pieces created excitement in me to work at a quicker pace and make adjustments intuitively to create the work.”
As someone who documents everyday movement through space, how does teaching in Tennessee show up in this particular piece?
I’ve retired from teaching, that is a new experience for me with art creation. Teaching and artmaking over the last twenty-one years has been a symbiotic relationship for creative practice. A lot of my work was done to share the art process journey with my students. I miss that opportunity and I’m looking for ways to broaden that journey and share it with a larger audience.
How do you decide where the “invention” takes over from the “record” in a given work?
At some level, the viewer may see it all as invention. It may be more difficulty to distinguish what is real or invented. Though if the viewer looks closely, it becomes more apparent. I’ve generally kept them in their separate lanes. Though one of my new works, “There & Back, Again,” does blend the two invented and the record. I’ll allow the viewer to decide.
Objects 2, featuring new work from Marc Boyson, is on view at Kai Lin Art in West Midtown through July 17.
