Holding to a tradition that sees painting as a form of illusion, Boyla’s art can be viewed as existing in a perpetual limbo: a place where the limited and real world mingles with the eternal and fictional. Recurrent characters offer a sense of familiarity as they navigate a foreign cosmos shorn of all sense of time and place. In more recent works, Boyla has turned to the tropes of advertising to explore fictional worlds closer to home: that of unlimited promises and a yearning for something better that by its very premise can never be real. Across all his work he asks: when the difference between real and unreal is so blurred, where does that leave our sense of being in the world?


Max Boyla (b. 1991) lives and works in London. Max has recently graduated from the prestigious Royal Academy Schools, London. He holds a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Painting from Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. Recent solo exhibitions include Add More Fuel to Your Life, Sim Smith, London (2023) and Star Diminish, Patriothall Gallery, Edinburgh (2019). Recent group exhibitions include Royal Academy Schools Show, Royal Academy, London (2023); Tic Tac Toe, APT Gallery, London (2023); Some Kind of Delicacy, Hello Goodbye Gallery, London (2022); Saxifrage, Kupfer, London (2022); Inside out, The Artist Room, London (2022); Dream Baby Dream, The Fitzrovia Gallery, London (2022) and Interim Show, The Royal Academy, London (2021); Sunday Studios Auction, New York, (2020); GIFC, Fisher Parrish, New York (2018); Slightly Seared on the Reality Grill, Unit 5 Gallery, London (2018) and Stuffed Gallery, Newave Gallery, Aberdeen (2017) among others. Max was awarded Dewar Arts Award by the Scottish International Education Trust as well as RSA Benno Schotz Prize for the most promising work by a Scottish artist under 30 domiciled in Scotland.