The Balloon Catcher
2015
THE BALLOON CATCHER features works created by Boyan during the two years
that preceded the show at RawArt Gallery, which he had spent in his homeland of
Bulgaria.
The exhibition was in fact a painting installation, created specifically for the
gallery’s space. It included around 50 oil-on-wood paintings of different sizes,
featuring characters that Boyan has painted repeatedly over the years. These
include the pirate, the clown, the magician, the freak, and horse riders
from different eras and contexts — knights, cowboys, and Napoleons.
These male heroic figures have become embedded in our cultural memory in early
childhood. In Boyan’s paintings, these characters look like dressed-up visitors,
while his painterly work virtuously skips from one European genre to another.
Europe, the historical-geopolitical realm ruled by the Western Christian Church,
is present in these paintings not only as a biographical or art-historical background but also as the motherland of the early children’s tales — the ones that came from deep in the forest, that haven’t yet been watered down by Disney or by our contemporary society’s political correctness. Boyan depicts these legendary figures through their dark, perverse, tragic-comic, sarcastic, European side, emphasizing their relevance to our contemporary world through painterly means and installation.
- Design: Avigail Reiner
- Editing: Leah Abir
- Texts: Leah Abir, Menahem Goldberg
- Translation: Safra Nimrod
- Copies: 100
- Pages: 104
- Type of binding: hardcover
- Reproductions: Lena Gomon, Tal Nissim
- Printing: A.R. Printing LTD
- Publication: RAWART GALLERY PRESS
- Place of publication: Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Israel
- Book photography: Leafing Magazine
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Boyan, born in 1975 in Bulgaria, emigrated to Israel in 1997 and lives and works in Bulgaria. Boyan is a graduate of Bezalel and the School of Visual Arts in New York. His work ranges from realism to fantasy, as he combines historical and fictional figures with intimate moments from his personal life. His paintings are rich in detail, dynamic and multi-layered, and are characterized by intense color, dense compositions, and absurd elements.
Boyan is engaged in mapping and expanding the boundaries of painting while in dialogue with art history, iconography, and visual culture. His work is influenced by classical styles alongside contemporary symbols, and it invites the viewer on a journey through time and space – into worlds of legends, knights, pirates, and fairies, alongside everyday scenes from his life and family.
His works have been presented in solo exhibitions at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art, Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York, Sommer Gallery, Gallery 39, and Row-Art Gallery in Tel Aviv. He has also participated in group exhibitions at leading institutions such as the Bat Yam Museum, the Haifa Museum, the First Herzliya Biennale, the Peter Kilchmann Gallery in Zurich, and the Christian Ehrentraut Project Room in Berlin.
His works are included in prestigious public and private collections around the world, including the Peter Kilchmann Collection in Zurich, the Zabludowicz Collection in London, the Fruchter Family Collection in Belgium and Israel, the Haifa Museum of Art Collection, and the Rubel Family Collection in Miami.
