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Horia Boboia
By Jeff Jahn
The overall change in Portland's level of sophistication can be seen through the cultural asides made in many of its recent narrative/figurative art shows. A perfect example is Horia Boboia's Spring Collection at Chambers Gallery.
The collection is catty and rife with inside jokes that seem directed at various segments of the Portland art scene via pentrating satires of the basic archetypes one finds in any developed art/fashion scene.
It seems only healthy that a few of the unsubstantiated ego bubbles around the scene might be challenged in the process.
In the last five years, a bevy of art camps have settled in, one of them being the fashionista camp. In a city once known for its lack of savvy when surveying airport travelers, a lot has changed. These days there are usually two to four fashion shows a week (usually coupled with an art organization or two).
Portland is studded with fashion boutiques like Seaplane, the English Department, Yes, and Foundation, to name just a few. Add to that mix UltraPDX.com, a daily fashion and culture blog, and you have some idea of what is happening here.
Boboia has channeled this energy with skill and gusto, creating a hilarious cast of characters such as the Blake-like Untitled (Hope). It features an angel who is either creating stars or destroying them with his terrible vision. That sounds like hope to me.
I also appreciate how the show consists of a pantheon of actors (though some are clearly in supporting roles). For example, Untitled (Fart) and Untitled (Blank) seem to have been created to offset the darker works like Untitled (US) or Untitled (Terrorist).
Yes, some of these are clichéd bon mots and too-easy political zeitgeist parodies, but that's the point. It's a lexicon of current clichés, and I like that the actual works are masterfully nuanced no matter how simple the subject matter (if you're going to do Blake, do it well, and Boboia does).
My Favorite works like Untitled (DR) take on the obvious with such finesse. Yes, the doctor is a young man dressed as death with a scythe standing in two candy-colored concentric rings. The figure is definitely grim and the rings seem to keep him at bay, possibly acknowledging that drugs often just treat the symptoms of an inevitable death. By portraying the doctor as a macabre dancer in a ridiculous state of equilibrium, it takes on the ring of truth.
"Untitled (Dr)"
© Horia Boboia
Image Courtesy of the Artist
Another Favorite was Untitled (Warlord). In it a decapitated head (or was it a sculpture?) is displayed in a room dominated by a fierce looking figure on a plinth. The core figure features arms inspired by hindi deities and is situated next to a water cooler. Yup, I've met a few water cooler warlords.
"Untitled (Warlord)"
© Horia Boboia
Image Courtesy of the Artist
Others works like Untitled (Picasso) and Untitled (Fool) are purposefully strained, like much of haute couture culture.
"Untitled (Fool)"
© Horia Boboia
Image Courtesy of the Artist
All of Boboia's characters, although shaded and hollow, exist as archetypes drawn from numerous sources. From tarot cards to theater to art-scene players to fashion show groupies, Boboia shows us the spectrum of the Human condition.
His strength here was to embrace cliché by turning his entire troupe into an existential study of the roles played out in every type of society and then updating them with refined hints of a modern, and even local, sensibility.
