Thunder Only Happens When It's Raining, 2024, Dye and bleach on satin, 140 x 200 cm
Max Boyla is a Scottish cross-disciplinary artist based in London. His swirling dye and bleach on satin works have an ambiguous quality which drifts between pure abstraction and natural landscape, swinging between sea and sky and formlessness. Satin is the perfect canvas, literally and metaphorically, for Max to think about environmental balance. Commonly a mix of polyester, rayon, acetate, and cotton, Satin is a composite fabric made from both natural and non-natural materials. Whilst rayon, acetate and cotton are sustainable and renewable materials, polyester is a byproduct in the process of extracting petroleum, and therefore unsustainable. Max’s work uses material to draw attention to the contrast between sustainable and unsustainable products, and how ‘green’ and ‘un-green’ living are so often woven together in our society. His sculptural works are often sardonic takes on the petroleum industry - large michelin men or ceramic iterations of the Shell logo.
"Boyla's paintings indicate how the petroleum industry and its products are interwoven throughout our society, in which ecological practices are inextricable from petrochemical capitalism and some of its supposedly green “alternatives”. The glossy satin absorbs paint, creating a shiny finish which jostles with the complex atmospheric effects evoked in the abstract image. Canvases are often riven in two by a vertical detail suggesting a lightning strike, inverted horizon line, or fissure. Through these visual devices, Boyla evades precisely defining the image, opening it up to imagination and emotion."
[Excerpt from 'Meeting Points Within This Elemental Mesh', an essay by Anna Souter]