Travis Boyer (b. 1979, Fort Worth, TX)
Travis Boyer works with dye on silk velvet to create paintings that shimmer with depth, intimacy, and material transformation. By manipulating the fabric’s pile with dyes, steamers, and styling tools, Boyer activates surfaces that shift with light and movement, inviting embodied looking. His work explores adornment, queer embodiment, and the politics of surface, merging references to Rococo painting, drag performance, and beauty culture. Everyday motifs—flowers, jewelry, feathers—become theatrical and seductive, collapsing the line between the decorative and the critical.
Boyer received his MFA from Bard College in 2012 and his BFA from the University of North Texas in 2003. His recent solo exhibitions include Personal Effects (Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zurich, 2025), Twoness (Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Paris, 2024), MTWTFSS (Noon Projects, Los Angeles, 2023), and Free Makeovers (False Flag, Queens, 2021). He has participated in group exhibitions at institutions including the Colby College Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, the New Museum (New York), and the deCordova Museum (Lincoln, MA), and was featured in the 2021 Texas Biennial.
His residencies include the Fire Island Artist Residency, the Shandaken Project, and Frida Hansen Hus (Norway). Boyer’s work is held in the collections of the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), Colby College Museum of Art (Maine), Portland Museum of Art (Maine), and the Hood Museum of Art (New Hampshire).
Boyer currently lives and works in New York, NY.