Vehicles and structures are not just means of transport or protection from the elements; they are messages about their owners and creators—symbols of wealth, both financial and cultural. By depicting these status symbols in demise, Boo has unintentionally produced ‘double orbituaries’, not just of the death of people involved, but precisely through the concurrent demise of their symbols of civility. As diametric opposite of the advertisement made to psyche us into a fuzzy mood all ready to accumulate more things, Boo’s paintings awake us instead: not by bringing us back to life from our respective wretched states, but by reminding that we are all implicated in accidents, from the start thru the end. Boom! We exist, only to end up in a heap.
Michael Lee
(extract from The Truth About Crash and Burn: On Boo Sze Yang’s “Boom!” series. Boo Sze Yang: Forever at The Crossroad, 2015, Sunda Press)