“Too far from home; tales of the Midnight Cowboy”

A follow up to Hovvrad’s 2019 project “There’s no such place”, we follow the character known as the midnight cowboy as he takes the long road home. Hovvrad utilizes his love for the west to tell a tale of a runaway who is searching for a lover he can settle down with. We will explore themes of codependency, reflective consciousness, lust, deceit, love, and loss of control. As we travel throughout the west, we relive moments that reflect a new sense of awareness for our cowboy. As he comes to the realization well, at the time my priorities were different. Using written notes addressed to the mystery lover, Hovvrad dives into the overthinking mentality of our cowboy. As the story progresses, the realization of who the cowboy is becoming starts to unravel, as he realizes he is chasing an image rather than true love. We start to understand the codependency the cowboy has in older men, alluding to the fact that he is only looking for stability and sexual gratification.

“The body of work really explains the failure of my modern love story,” Says Hovvrad. I developed this idea in the winter of 2019 yet placed it on the back burner because well, at the time my priorities were different This project followed one of my worst artistic existential crises during the Covid-19 pandemic. I spent a lot of time in my head whilst one again stuck in my room. I would create works, but something wasn’t feeling right. No matter how many paintings I made, nothing was speaking to me. So, I stepped back from creating paintings and did nothing for a while. Following. The crisis, I came back to a more centered state of mind, and it was almost instant I knew what I needed to do. The feeling of missing half of what I assumed was going to be a forever kind of thing, really sent my headspace into a frenzy. I began to retrace my thought, running back the clock 3 years to all the fights, lies, and moments of pain and sadnes