Brenau University premiered its newest solo exhibition Thursday in the university’s President’s Gallery at the Simmons Visual Art Center.
Atlanta-based artist Chris Boyko’s Assembling the Masses features 19 large-scale surrealistic oil paintings, each using automatic painting techniques that aim to reveal hidden realities within the human mind. The collection will be on display from now until November 24th.
Gallery Director Gena Brodie Robbins described Boyko’s work as “Beautifully Bizarre”
“It's so aesthetically appealing because he really thought forward with his application of the color, " Robbins said. “That's the beautiful part. Then, when you walk up to the work, you start to see the details. And there is a little bit of a weird aspect. It has this organic, almost an interior human anatomy even, you start to see that going on. And so, you've got the otherworldly, bizarre, strange aspect of the work. When you put both of that together, you start to get those surrealistic aspects of that dreamlike quality that comes through.”
The pieces within the exhibition include an assembly of various shapes and colors to convey each painting’s message. During the exhibition’s premiere, students, faculty and guests of the university were invited to ask Boyko about the works and the creative process behind them.
“Usually, whenever an artist is painting something, they will have the reference in front of them,” Boyko said. "And, they're painting exactly what’s in front of them. So, I took the opposite approach, where instead of doing that, I developed it all in my head. I allowed it to just form naturally.”
Boyko began working on the exhibition in July of this year but said he began experimenting with the automatic painting style in 2011 while studying Fine Arts at Kennesaw State University.
During the artist talk, Boyko also shared his advice for enabling creativity with Brenau's current art students.
“Don't worry about your grade,” he said. “If you make good art, you’ll make good grades. So, just focus on that. Don't make art for the sake of that being just a project, because once you're out of college, you don't have any projects assigned to you.”
Throughout his career, Boyko’s work has also been featured in a variety of solo and group exhibitions around the country, including at the prestigious Kibbee Gallery, Mason Murer, the Marietta Museum of Art, the Studio Door in San Diego, and the Life Force Arts Center in Chicago. He also has had work displayed in a solo exhibition at the Peachtree Branch Library (adjacent to the High Museum of Art).
Assembly of the Masses is free and open to the public for viewing at Brenau’s Presidential Gallery during its regular business hours. To view Boyko’s other works, click here.
