Ukrainian Sculptural Painter Bohdan Bovt Opens First Los Angeles Solo Exhibition

Bohdan Bovt, whose work is held by the National Art Museum of Ukraine, opens his LA solo show 'The Power of Presence' — nine bas-relief works, Sept 17.

LOS ANGELES, CA, UNITED STATES, September 14, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Bohdan Bovt whose work entered the National Art Museum of Ukraine collection and has shown at art fairs in Berlin, Brussels and Barcelona opens his Los Angeles solo exhibition of sculptural relief painting. Opening reception Thursday, September 17, 4:00 PM, 1445 N La Brea Ave.

The Power of Presence, a solo exhibition by Ukrainian artist Bohdan Bovt, opening with a public reception on Thursday, September 17, 2026, at 4:00 PM at 1445 N La Brea Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90028. The exhibition features nine works in bas-relief and sculptural painting and remains on view through September 30, 2026.

Bovt does not paint images so much as build them. Trained as a wood and birch-bark carver before he ever worked on canvas, he makes paintings that rise off the wall modeled, carved, layered surfaces where light and shadow do as much work as pigment. Walk past one of his pieces and it changes. Stand still in front of it and it settles.

That is the argument of the exhibition. The Power of Presence is about what cannot be seen but is always felt: emotion, memory, inner strength, the residue of lived experience. Bovt's response to an invisible subject is a deeply physical one.

Bovt's technique comes out of a specific inheritance. Between 2005 and 2009 he trained in wood and birch-bark carving and carpentry at Art Vocational Training School No. 14 in Ivano-Frankove, in Ukraine's Lviv region a traditional craft education in material, tool and hand. He carried that discipline into contemporary practice, developing a hybrid form that sits between painting, relief sculpture and architectural surface.

His interest in how relief behaves is also a scholarly one. Bovt is the author of published research on the technology of modified gypsum mixtures in monumental and decorative art, on the evolution of bas-relief from classical tradition into contemporary interior space, and on how viewers perceive volumetric wall panels under different lighting scenarios. In other words: the way the work in this exhibition is lit is not an afterthought. It is the subject.

The collection grew from the artist's attention to the quiet moments that shape a person the pauses, the recoveries, the ordinary days that turn out to have mattered. Nature supplies the vocabulary: ridgelines, water, stone, air. The subject stays interior. Each work stands on its own. Hung in sequence, they form an arc from stillness and hope toward strength, freedom and inner awakening. The exhibition deliberately withholds a single reading, inviting each visitor to find a personal connection rather than a prescribed one.

About the artist

Bohdan Bovt is a Ukrainian bas-relief and sculptural painting artist working at the intersection of fine art, traditional carving craft and spatial composition.
In 2022 he was awarded the Grand Prix of the IX All-Ukrainian Triennial of Painting for the work Peak of Strength (Вершина сили) — the highest distinction of Ukraine's principal national painting exhibition. In 2023 he received the international Alliance Top Award (UAE) for Excellence in Artistic Merit, and in 2016 a Special Jury Prize at the "Quadro Art" International Biennale of Images in Poland.
In January 2020 Bovt donated his work Warmth of a Wooden Home (Тепло дерев'яного дому) to the National Art Museum of Ukraine in Kyiv, placing his practice within a national public collection.

His work first drew wider professional attention in 2015, when collector and Tuzov Gallery art director Vlad Tuzov selected him as one of three young Ukrainian artists for a gallery presentation staged within ART-KYIV Contemporary.

He has since exhibited at FAMA Barcelona Modern and Ancient Art Fair (2019), Positions Berlin Art Fair (2020), ART ON PAPER Brussels (2021) and FIABCN Barcelona International Art Fair (2021). Between 2017 and 2019 he produced commissioned relief works and large-scale sculptural pieces for private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands.

Bovt has been a member of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine since 2019 and of the International Creative and Art Association (ICAA) since 2020. From 2021 to 2024 he served as a jury member in the Visual Arts category of the Inspiration Awards, evaluating international submissions.
He lives and works in Juneau, Alaska.

Anna Bovt
Bohdan Bovt
bogdan.bovt8@gmail.com