Pat Boyer’s “Arena Series” is a meditation on a classical theme, the Arena at Verona, Italy. Dating from the first century, AD, this edifice bears a distinct resemblance to its contemporary, the great Coliseum in Rome. In Boyer’s vision, it has become the site for unearthing provocative dualities: antiquity and abstraction, containment and energy, culture and the body.
Boyer has taken the graceful order of the Arena’s curved, arched structure, and made it move. The ellipse spins and whirls, become airborne. Layered and transparent, it multiplies into twins and triplets, and more. Like a glowing lantern, it hangs in the darkness, or cracks open in the light. Whipping lines trace centrifugal energies, while heavy concentric rings bind space within space.
Not only does the structure move, the viewer moves too. We fly high above the Arena, its elliptical lines constituting a kind of labyrinth whose impenetrability holds an unspoken mystery. Clues abound: here is an amphitheater devoted to cultural expressions, both vulgar and refined. It has housed gladiatorial combat and chariot races, as well as theater and opera. It is a monument, a ruin, and a living building, still used today. It is an arena of social drama, which in the artist’s hands becomes a raw and elegant symbol for the self, capable of both a cloistered interiority and unpredictable vitality.
Using direct gestural drawing with graphite, as well pastel and acrylic paint, Boyer re-conceives architecture as something physically alive, a surrogate for the body. Allusions to the cell, the eye, the spine, and the womb recur in the work, with the Arena’s identity shifting before us. This Coliseum, constructed of arched portals, is seen as a porous membrane. Like an ovum, it is rigorously self-contained, yet paradoxically open and capable of fecund transformation.
John Mendelsohn has written art reviews and articles for Cover Magazine, the Jewish Week, ArtNet, and Internet magazine. His essays have appeared in a number of exhibition catalogs. Primarily focusing on contemporary art and photograph, he has also written on historical exhibitions. He taught at Illinois State University and the University of South Florida. He currently teaches at Fairfield University in Connecticut.