There's a dreamer element in the works of Imon Boy that we explored in our interview with him this week and in the Spring 2023 Quarterly. Even in his storytelling, the way he describes graffiti, the way the paintings always have this looking up at the sky characteristic to them (or literal), there is hope and a bit of fantasy. In his first museum show, The Beginning of Something, which opened this month CAC Málaga, Spain, he creates both a self-referential and fantastical version of himself, his influences and the act of graffiti.
As if he has jumped into a video game to create his own personal diary, Imon Boy is constructing a universe that is entirely his but also balancing itself on the universal. If you were born in the 1980s or early 1990s, these 8-bit to 16-bit graphics are hinged into our brains, the aesthetic of our earliest creative moments. And really, Imon Boy is at the beginning of something big as a storyteller, and we are seeing him begin to ascend. —Evan Pricco