Jarvis Boyland: Bad Attitude
Jarvis Boyland
Bad Attitude
10th October — 29th November 2025
MAMOTH is delighted to present Bad Attitude, Los Angeles–based painter Jarvis Boyland’s (b. 1995, Memphis, Tennessee) second solo exhibition with the gallery, on view from 10 October to 29 November 2025.
In Bad Attitude, Boyland presents a series of oil paintings based on lived encounters. Across this exhibition, melancholy intermingles with the warmth and delicacy of private, contemplative settings.
Tensions between life and loss are made visible in moments that are both tender and unsettling. The warm glow of light spilling across the closely cropped face in Sunglasses (Oliver Goldsmith), and across the figure tending a plant in Prune—cloth in one hand, watering can in the other—stands in stark contrast to the stillness of extinguished life in Grave #2, where a small eastern bluebird lies lifeless, its wings splayed across the canvas.
With composure and defiance, the figures in Boyland’s paintings occupy fictitious environments sutured from personal and found photographs. Continuing the artist’s fascination with interiority, paintings such as Living Room present a subtle tension through the depiction of careful, contained body language, as two elegantly dressed men kneel, looking away from the viewer—an emotionally charged awkwardness that gestures toward the fragility of intimate connection.
About the Artist
Jarvis Boyland (b. 1995, Memphis, Tennessee) lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles (2021–2024), attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2018), and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Memphis (2013–2017), where he also participated in the Andrew W. Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Programme at the Art Institute of Chicago (2015–2017).
Boyland’s recent solo exhibitions include Jarvis Boyland and Zenobia at Sanctuary, New York (2024); Lucky Stars at MAMOTH, London (2022); and On Hold at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2019). His work will also be included in the forthcoming group exhibition land marks at Pace Gallery, Los Angeles (2025), following recent presentations such as Giants: Art from the Dean Collection of Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2024); Black American Portraits at the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis (2023); All That Light: A Ten Year Retrospective of the AIR Programme (2012–2022) at Arts Incubator, Chicago (2022); Myselves at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2020); Disembodiment at United Talent Agency, Beverly Hills (2019); Permutations at Goucher College, Baltimore (2019); Foresight/Insight: Reflecting on the Museum’s Collection at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park (2019); Amid Kinship at Arts + Public Life and the University of Chicago (2019); as well as exhibitions at Monique Meloche Gallery, Chicago; Zevitas Marcus Gallery, Los Angeles; Blanc Gallery, Chicago; and Sager Braudis Gallery, Columbia, among others.
Boyland has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant (2024). He has participated in residencies at the Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque (2023); Fountainhead, Miami (2022); Arts + Public Life and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, University of Chicago (2018–2019); and ACRE, Wisconsin (2017). He was also awarded the Graduate Opportunity Programme Fellowship at UCLA (2021–2022) and the Department of Art Creative Achievement Award from the University of Memphis (2017).
Image: Jarvis Boyland, Living Room, 2025. Oil on linen, 63 × 67 in / 160 × 170 cm. Courtesy of the artist and MAMOTH.