Via Boley

Lives and works in Austin, TX

Artist statement

How do you accept a body that refuses to stay the same? Working in cut and sanded metal, ink glazes, and thin layers of acrylic, I build each painting toward a single point where something has to give, and something new takes its place. Cubist-inspired objects are used as a substitute for the figure, colliding and warping across the surface, a fractured reflection in place of a whole one. In a culture that praises sanitized images of women, the goal is to show the beauty in breaking down; allowing each piece to contain many states. Using reflective metal allows me to take something so restrictive (a mirror), and through cutting, painting, peeling, and sanding get at something a plain reflection cannot hold. When I look past my body, I contain multitudes, a body that shifts between states, healthy one day, inflamed or unreliable the next. I am impaled by my appearance, my body, my limits. This instability is present in my materials as well. If placed incorrectly, ink will remove acrylic, and the metal will lose its mirror-like sheen. It is a balancing act, where ink must be placed in thin layers and sealed before adding paint, and vice-versa. The result is a painting that holds chaos rather than resolve it: soft edges, sharp protective spikes, dark moments, and bright joyful ones, all in the same piece. It is this refusal to settle into one version, one image, one fixed self, that inspires my work.

Artwork