It has been said, variously, that art now functions less like a self-contained, completed truth and more like an evolving experiment. Bearing this in mind, Clay Bodvin utilizes technology to reshape and transform expectations and his work illustrates the notion of images not being definitive in their representation.

At the same time, Bodvin’s art captures that luxurious nature of everyday things, as exemplified by the work of Matisse. Interestingly, his personal vision of luxuriousness is aptly echoed by Neil Cox writing in Tate: The Art Magazine. In issue 29, 2003 Cox observed that:

“…Luxury is a relation to the world which philosopher Friedrich Schiller might have described as that of ‘melting beauty’, where the phenomenal world is reformed in sensuous matter (painting in this case) so that it softens the hard edges of the psyche…”

A wide range of styles, subjects and painterly treatments illustrate the artist’s thematic platform of Object: Desire/Result: Luxury and Clay describes his new work as photomedia painting. He creates sumptuous figurative, representational and object-oriented art experiences with a particular focus on the still life genre. These interior spaces (which cannot actually exist) are filled with collections of arabesque patterns and iconic subject matter—representing some of the artist’s personal objects of interest and desire and resulting visual notions of luxury.

Photomedia paintings as inkjet prints.

Clay Bodvin’s creative approach
- reassesses the traditional notions of the painted surface
- emphasizes the general over the particular/the archetypal over the actual and
- interprets one composition through multiple stylistic and material executions.

This is done with an intentionally limited (and limiting) assortment of contemporary media and technology. A laptop computer; specialized image-retouching software; a flatbed scanner; a 35mm Reflex camera; and a desktop, inkjet printer—for proofing images.

2006
Juxtaposition 2006, online international award, Artrom Gallery, Rome, Italy
Ida Carey Gallery, ArtsPost, Hamilton, New Zealand
eaGallery, Auckland, New Zealand
Lopdell House Gallery, Titirange-Waitakere City, New Zealand

2005
“New Artsits/New Work”, Compose Art Auckland, New Zealand
Color III International, Period Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska
“There Must be Some Way Out of Here”, Artrom Gallery, Rome, Italy
Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art, Florence, Italy
Waikato National Art Award, Waikato Society of Arts, Hamilton, New Zealand