Derek Paul Jack Boyle at Smart Objects

Artist: Derek Paul Jack Boyle

Exhibition title: Ulterior

Venue: Smart Objects, Los Angeles, US

Date: April 28 – June 11, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Smart Objects, Los Angeles

SMART OBJECTS is pleased to present Ulterior, a solo exhibition by Derek Paul Jack Boyle.

Eventual, forthcoming, expected – also beyond what’s shown or expressed, Ulterior describes paradoxical tensions between architecture, landscape, and objects in an exhibition of new paintings by Derek Paul Jack Boyle. Like a dismembered gallery or studio space, fragments of pensive empty rooms; blank walls, doors, windows, stairs, hallways, collide with and collapse into desert landscapes of canyon clefts, roads, trees, rocks, and prismatic skies. In a show about showing, Boyle equips the stuf of solitude as metaphors for interpersonal dynamics. In lieu of fgures, utilities, such as chairs, extension cords, lamps, and ladders, act as characters when set in relation to their broken and amassed surroundings.

While stylistically immediate, abstracted color felds merge to form deep durational distances. Textured with grass, walls, dirt, ice, clouds, and light, fat plains of painterly space meet at exaggerated angles to construct impossibly sharp perspectives and durational depths. In illusory scenes, intermediate terrains demarcate infnite pathways, as observed in the stretch of chairs and candles precariously supported by dark-violet ice in The Path, or following an electrical current from an outlet into unknown territory in Extension.

Set in theatrical palettes of dusks and dawns, voids and connections of impossible landscapes fip space to reveal secret passages and hidden portals, staging a choice to enter or bypass as in Decision, Shooting Star, and The Distance. In a hauntingly hued mese en abyme, or scene containing a smaller version of itself, Model Room displays a recursive iteration of itself, even replicating an inexplicable veil of light emanating from the room’s corner. The Droste efect of eternal returns is magnifed in Show Mountain in which a framed sunset that could play the role of either window or painting, is exhibited next to a sculpture-cum-venue mountain that endlessly repeats replicas within. A sense of comedic dread mounts when the punchline is that the punchline may never arrive.

Merging, incepting, interrupting, or otherwise set in relation, the inanimate is animated with meaning when playing out private melodramas. For Boyle, new worlds are discovered in intermediate spaces; between interiors and exteriors, earnest and joking, inevitability and mystery, beginnings and endings. While not solid destinations, the scenes trust in their own premonitions that eventually a path will appear.

Derek Paul Jack Boyle (b. 1985, Cambridge MA) received his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI and his BA from Emerson College in Boston, MA. Boyle’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles,, VICE Creators Project, Elephant Magazine, and WYNC/NPR’s Radiolab. Recent exhibitions include: Verhandlungsbasis, Palmer Galerienhaus – Stuttgart, Germany; Abstract with Figure, James Fuentes, New York; Outs (solo), SMART OBJECTS, Los Angeles; Nostos, Matthew Brown

Gallery, Los Angeles; Den (solo), SMART OBJECTS, Los Angeles; Replica, Insect Gallery, Los Angeles; All the Small Things, Steve Turner, Los Angeles; Unease (solo), SMART OBJECTS, Los Angeles; Can’t Fix Broken (duo w/ Mitra Saboury), Alter Space, San Francisco; You Catch More Flies with Arsenic Than Honey, Club Pro, Los Angeles; Thin Places, SMART OBJECTS, Landers, CA; Los Angeles; Wwwest, Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York; Plainly to Propound, Gavlak Gallery, Los Angeles; and recent fairs including NADA Miami and Felix LA. Boyle is represented by SMART OBJECTS in Los Angeles.

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Show Mountain, Acrylic on cradled 48 x 83 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Nooks, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 48 x 83 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Model Room, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 36 x 48 in, 2022

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, The Path, Acrylic on cradled 48 x 83 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Melee, Acrylic on cradled 24 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, The Decision, Acrylic on cradled 30 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Fissure, Acrylic on cradled 15.5 x 24 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, No Sign, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 8 x 10 in, 2022

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Bunkers, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 48 x 83 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Tuesday, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 9 x 12 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Shooting Star, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 31 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Extension, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 48 x 83 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Hunter Gatherer, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 24 x 29 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Extensions, Acrylic on cradled birch panel 34 x 24 in, 2021

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Holes In My Room (Day Cycle), Acrylic and flashe on cradled birch panel, 36 x 48 in, 2022

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Holes In My Room (Night Cycle), Acrylic and flashe on cradled birch panel, 36 x 48 in, 2022

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Totems, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 34 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Household, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 24 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, The Distance, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 48 x 74 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Stroll, Acrylic on cradled birch panel, 24 x 48 in, 2023

Derek Paul Jack Boyle, Ulterior, 2023, exhibition view, Smart Objects, Los Angeles