Will Boone
"Pep Rally Drawing 1", 2024
Graphite on vellum
17 x 14 inches (43.18 x 35.56 cm)
Courtesy of the artist

Selected by Randy Kennedy

Will Boone ( b. 1982, Houston) developed his multidisciplinary art practice in Texas under the influence of underground music, drawing on the material manifestations of various American obsessions; Elvis, conspiracy theories, roadside attractions, the open road, the country’s native flora and fauna, and monster movies all feature in Boone’s cosmological vernacular. For his early text-based “sigil” paintings, the artist took inspiration from marks left by twentieth-century vagabonds as they traversed the United States. Subsequent work made in New York and later Los Angeles includes zines and books, sprawling installations, hand-painted bronze statues of blown-up vintage hobby models, a sculpture sited on the backlot of Paramount Picture studios, another in an underground bunker in the Coachella Valley for DesertX 2017, and Sweet Perfume (2019), a film featuring a misunderstood Leatherface character who moves to California to find himself. Boone shares a fascination with the dark underbelly of the American psyche with sculptor Cady Noland and an obsession with the mythological Western landscape of extremes with artist Robert Smithson. The artist lives in Houston.

Boone presented his first solo show in New York at Karma in 2011 and has since had exhibitions at Karma, New York (2023); David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2023); Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2019–20); Galerie Patrick Seguin, Paris (2018); and the Rubell Family Collection (now the Rubell Museum), Miami (2014), among others.