Boo Saville: Gentle

Gentle, a solo exhibition by Boo Saville, brings together a group of paintings depicting men and boys. Working from fragmented and digitally sourced images, Saville paints figures that seem to sit between strength and vulnerability, closeness and distance, and what is visible and what is hidden. 

Echoing the moral unease of The Picture of Dorian Gray, these portraits appear suspended between surface and truth; their identities are mediated through the distortions of online culture and the so-called “manosphere”.

Through blurred forms and glitch-like painterly gestures, the works resist clarity, inviting viewers to look through uncertainty toward what lies beneath. Moments of tenderness, grief, care and isolation sit uneasily alongside ideals of control, performance, and self-mastery. Rather than offering resolution, the paintings hold these tensions in place, asking how masculinity is shaped by community, expectation, and the pressures of visibility. Drawing on ideas of compassion and love articulated by thinkers such as James Baldwin and bell hooks, the exhibition invites us to consider what is hidden, suppressed, or denied within contemporary male identity.

An essay Semper Dolens written by Hannah Lees accompanies the exhibition. Click the link below to download.