Witty, colorful and playful, Kezban Boyla’s paintings welcome us to compositions of nature, but always to slightly off, unanticipated ones at that. She does this through a combination of methods, bringing together seemingly unrelated creatures at first glance to form a unity; playing with size, shape and proportion; subtle suggestions as to how we approach (or more accurately detach ourselves) from the natural world in the present day and age. A melancholic whale tuckered out on what recalls a giraffe pattern with huge too perfect yellow peppers and pink flowers; a content camel in a field of pineapples sniffing a strawberry almost her own size; dripping cows under a dripping sun with tomatoes and a rainbow in the air... They are uniquely inviting, beautiful and simultaneously confusing, familiar yet surprising.
Kezban Boyla’s compositions hint at an “artificial”
nature, our perception or distortion of it. The futility of our relentless
attempts to control it, our obsession with security and immortality come across
through branded vegetables, misnamed fruits, and immaculate animal figures out
of context. The compelling background patterns complement these living things:
despite our misguided, overstretched efforts to tame them, they are a world of
their own. What is striking in Boyla’s paintings is that they remain naïve,
almost optimistic while being cynical; if anything we are grotesque, but she
succeeds in making us laugh at ourselves without being self-righteous.
An extensive, generous use of color and
texture present draw us into the paintings, stimulating our senses and
imagination. Inspired by (and playing with) a variety of sources, ranging from
some of the earliest still lives by Caravaggio to Jasper Jones’ False Start series, Boyla invites us to
consider nature and life whimsically. How far can we try to manufacture,
contain and brand the natural world? Why are we so scared of mortality and let
this fear define our relation to the nature? Are we aware of our never ending
preoccupation with security and how it confines our everyday life beginning
even with what we eat? These questions, which could have been dark, trite and
didactic, emerge in an entirely different form and tone in Boyla’s
practice. We want to humbly partake and
enjoy this natural world with its own quirks and colors, without interfering
with it. Even though the zebra or the bee seem out of size and place, or the
pear and banana are misidentified by us, they seem so much more at home in the
world.
Liz Amado