British artist Craig Boagey's solo exhibition "Spirit Economy" is on view at Amanita gallery in New York's Lower East Side. The show presents lush, meticulously executed paintings that assemble internet ephemera—memes, diagrams, YouTube stills, and references from online subcultures like nu-spiritualism and Remilia—into compositions that blend cute, feminine, and aspirational imagery with machinic, masculine, and esoteric elements. Works like "The All Thing" (2025) incorporate AlphaGo's famous Move 37, Christian iconography, and a memex, treating disposable digital content as cultural documents.
The exhibition matters because it critically examines the practice of internet aesthetic assemblage—the curation of images and memes under thematic tags on platforms like Tumblr, TikTok, Pinterest, and Are.na—which is rarely analyzed as a form of folk art or cultural commentary. Boagey's paintings elevate this ephemeral, often overlooked digital behavior into fine art, using it to depict a falling empire saturated with heart reacts. The show also reflects the ongoing influence of pandemic-era online communities on contemporary visual culture, bridging internet aesthetics and traditional painting with serious intent.