CalArts alum Sean Shim-Boyle (Art BFA 08) employs rigorous experimentation with form and material to explore the self in My Heart Says Bang, an exhibition of works running now through Jan. 14, 2023, at Galerie Marguo in Paris.
Marking Shim-Boyle’s first solo show in France, My Heart Says Bang features a suite of recent encaustic paintings and silicone sculptures exploring the biomechanisms that are hidden, yet to which we are beholden. The works draw from the artist’s experience living with chronic cardiac disease, which began presenting in his early 20s.
“I think for me, identity registers through physical vulnerability,” Shim-Boyle said in an exhibition walkthrough with curator Mélanie Scheiner (watch below). “That a deepest sense of being in danger comes for me at that atomic level. It’s potassium and calcium ions not correctly slipping back and forth across a cellular membrane. And as a result, I have a short circuit in my heart that creates that vulnerability. That is the scale, the register … at which I feel most vulnerable.”
Among the paintings is EKG#17 – All of it Wrong (2022), a massive canvas on which the words “LUB DUB” have been scrawled in red—a pulsing visual reminiscent of a laparoscopy. The show also features site-specific sculptures 439 BPM (2022) and Flowers from the Giftshop (2022), in which silicone urgently springs to life: “I want the works to be sited in a place, and I want there always to be a reference back to sort of an autobiographical experience. That’s really important.”
Learn more about the exhibition and watch Shim-Boyle’s exhibition film at Galerie Marguo.
As digital content and social media producer, Taya enjoys lifting up the stories and accomplishments of CalArts' students, alums, and faculty. She fancies herself a visual artist but is really more of an overzealous collector of art supplies.
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