Spirit Economy

Amanita is pleased to present Spirit Economy, Craig Boagey’s second solo exhibition in New York.

King Lear, Act 3, Scene 2

LEAR

Blow winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drenched our steeples, drowned the cocks.
You sulph’rous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers of oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head. And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ th’ world.
Crack nature’s molds, all germens spill at once
That makes ingrateful man.

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my daughters.
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness.
I never gave you kingdom, called you children;
You owe me no subscription. Then let fall
Your horrible pleasure. Here I stand your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That will with two pernicious daughters join
Your high-engendered battles ’gainst a head
So old and white as this. O, O, ’tis foul!

Let the great gods,
That keep this dreadful pudder o’er our heads
Find out their enemies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulgèd crimes
Unwhipped of justice. Hide thee, thou bloody hand,
Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue
That art incestuous. Caitiff, to pieces shake,
That under covert and convenient seeming
Has practiced on man’s life. Close pent-up guilts,
Rive your concealing continents and cry
These dreadful summoners grace. I am a man
More sinned against than sinning.

Craig Boagey (b. 1985, Liverpool, UK) is a contemporary artist who predominantly works in the form of painting and drawing. Combining various paint mediums, Boagey’s creative preoccupations revolve around enticing, succulent, fleshy, sometimes erotic, occasionally perverse subject matter. Often using nature, in particular mushrooms, as a vehicle or device, Boagey sorts to discuss and examine human behaviourism and our social interrelations with each other and the world around us. The paintings are laboriously executed with a precise virtuosity, often referencing theology, mythology, poetry and the occult. Essentially, Boagey’s work aims to discuss, dissect and question humanity’s cognitive relationship with the earth, technology, and itself.

Boagey currently resides in London, United Kingdom. He received his BA in 2008 from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts.