December 10–January 7, 2023
Steve Turner is pleased to present Todo el Tiempo, a solo exhibition of new abstract paintings by Buenos Aires-based Joaquin Boz that rely on his physical energy, careful scrutiny and patient refinement. Each work was created over several months in his Los Angeles studio, a daily process that encompassed numerous processes and tools causing the surfaces to appear rubbed, scratched, layered, and built up, minimized, thinned and reworked. In the past, he worked only with his gloved hands and rags and favored an earthy palette of browns, greens and yellows. The new works include every color imaginable and result from a new array of hand-held tools. They vibrate with color and reverberate with marks and gestures to represent time–all time.
Joaquín Boz (born 1987) studied at Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Buenos Aires under the direction of Jorge Macchi. He has had solo exhibitions with Móvil, Buenos Aires (2014); Steve Turner, Los Angeles (2015, 2017, 2018 and 2020); Barro, Buenos Aires (2018 and 2022 ) as well as at Zona Maco, Mexico City (2016) and Art Brussels (2018). He was awarded the First Prize Salón Nacional de Rosario, Buenos Aires (2015) and his work was included in My Buenos Aires, curated by Albertine de Galbert, at La Maison Rouge, Paris (2015).
Impossible Blooms
A photo travels across infinite space networks, and you say to me I’m on this one now. I look at it and look at it, try to capture it, like in the glint of an instant. I would have wished to see it up close to say something. I slide my fingers over the canvas of my phone to ensure the greatest detail. One time, a friend of mine did this show with dried-up acrylics she’d collected from the palettes of friends who had left the country. I’ve texted her to confirm the story, but she isn’t answering. I get up from my chair, brew some coffee, and spend some time in its bottomless dark. The first time I saw your painting, you were only using black, so I pictured you as being on the elderly side. That was so so many years ago, I tell myself and abandon the idea, for all the truth it owns. The hot fragrance vaporizes in the cup; it’s a summer morning. The sun is still in mellow mood. Inspiration comes so hard; it would be easier if I could sit down with your works. I read one of your poems and smile at those fresh lines made of noble materials like wood and stone, sadness and being in love, adding touches of color. Mud too. I’d like to be a painter, I tell myself. To wake up, go to my studio, turn on the computer, and open up a tab of the last text I found moving. Leave it there, look at it from time to time, and wring every last drop of mystery out of it. Put some music on and, given over to the task in hand, let the words be replaced by forms, brushstrokes, and apparently simple decisions. The words abandoned me, you told me not long ago when you never stopped painting.
My friend answered yes and confirms the story. I seize the opportunity to tell her about you and my efforts to write you. I don’t know if I’ll make it in time, I tell her, and she smartly asserts that everything comes in its right time. I don’t quite understand what time she’s referring to. Maybe to a just one; not in the sense of exact in its measurement, but of exercising justice. To carry with you what you desire, the harvest of a process and the teachings of occurrences. Fairness and punishment. It may also name a fitting, docile time whose plainness fits its period the way an animal fits its owner.
Actually, she only answered how are you, I miss you. I lie to put in her mouth what I feel your paintings speak of, in a velvet voice that walks on carpets.
Now I came out on the balcony to get some air. I sat among the plants and their gifts, and I recalled something in the hope of finding new words for you:
Joaquin’s paintings are like a poem by Liliana Ancalao. This Mapuche woman tells how God takes a day from this world and crumples it up like a sheet of paper. Squished into a ball, it exudes reds, browns, and bright and grubby transparencies. Dawn breaks. We emerge from the page with our soul crumpled. We dry off in the sun and resemble impossible blooms.
by Marie Gouiric
Translated by Ian Barnett
