ART & DESIGN

Will Boone: Star Material

This young artist is digging deep and stirring things up.


Will Boone

In early September, Will Boone’s studio in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn was jam-packedwith spray paint cans and grimy paintings thickly layered with black acrylic letters and numbers (911, xiii) that were about to be shipped to London for his first show at the Jonathan Viner Gallery. “Ialso have all this stuff that was made by inmates in prison,” said Boone, 32, as he walked over to a short shelf bearing a collection of cardboard dominoes, dice fashioned from bread, and other curios—like a coin with a bullet shot through it, and a stuffed snake he picked up in a junk store in Houston, where he grew up. Such obscure bits of underbelly Americana regularly provide inspiration for Boone. The spare, punchy works he makes with just a few lines of orange spray paint, for instance, riff on the markings—he calls them “hieroglyphics”—that vagabonds left under bridges or in train yards in the 1930s and ’40s. “They’re like survival clues forhow to get by,” he said. “Like, ‘Don’t stop—keep going.’” Boone moved to New York five years ago, encouraged by the artist Mark Flood, for whom hewas working, and he’s quickly gained a following. In December, at the Rubell Family Collection inMiami, he will present an installation built from boxing-gym equipment. He’s also experimentingwith his symbol paintings, trying out new spraypaints, and working on larger canvases. “The placewhere the thing gets fucked up—that’s themoment of beauty,” he said.

Boone's Soldier, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Karma.

Star Material

“Everyone who really responds to the work talks about playing with sand at the beach.” -Jennifer Guidi. Read more from this up-and-coming artist here. Photograph by Ramona Trent.

Guidi’s Untitled (Field #10 Black & White), 2014. Courtesy of artist.

“The art objects have a sort of aliveness to them. They change the sonics of the room, and it maybe becomes a little more immersive.” -Kevin Beasley. Read more from this up-and-coming artist here.

Photographer: Biel Parklee

Beasley’s Katies’, 2014. Courtesy of Jen Vong.

“No rules,” says Lena Henke of her practice. “For fun, I work.” Read more from this up-and-coming artist here.

Photographer: Biel Parklee

Installation view of Henke’s Geburt und Familie, 2013. Courtesy of artist and Galerie Parisa Kind.

“Things overlap. It’s just a fact of existence.” -Sebastian Black. Read more from this up-and-coming artist here.

Sebastian Black’s Big Green, 2013. Courtesy of Clearing gallery.

Installation view of Black’s Period Piece (Partition) 2 and Edible Manhattan, 2013. Courtesy of Clearing gallery.

“I don’t have any connection to anything I make.” -Ryan Estep. Read more from this up-and-coming artist here.

Courtesy of the artist.

Installation view of Untitled Iron Oxide, Soap, Lemons, 2014. Courtesy of Ellis King Gallery, Dublin.

“The place where the thing gets fucked up—that’s the moment of beauty.” – Will Boone. Read more from this up-and-coming artist here.

Portrait by Stephanie Boone.

Boone’s Soldier, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Karma.

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