Relief as Architecture: Five Lessons for Designers from Bohdan Bovt

One of the more useful Los Angeles exhibitions for interior designers this September was not in a showroom. “The Power of Presence,” Ukrainian artist Bohdan Bovt’s first LA solo exhibition, ran September 17–30 at 1445 N La Brea Ave.

Its nine works sat between painting, sculpture and architectural surface — and showed why relief deserves to be considered during the design of a room, not after it.

Here are five lessons designers can take from the exhibition.

Lesson 1: Light is part of the work

Bovt’s reliefs depend as much on shadow as on pigment. Walk past one and the image changes.

At the Los Angeles exhibition, directional lighting from above and slightly to the side emphasized raised forms without turning the installation theatrical. In works such as “Wisdom of the Forest” and “Summit of Strength,” a small change in viewing angle could noticeably alter the perceived depth.

For designers: specify the artwork and its lighting together. A flat frontal wash can erase exactly what makes relief interesting.

Lesson 2: Relief works as architecture

Bas-relief once belonged primarily to façades and monuments. Indoors, it operates differently: the viewer stands closer, the depth can be shallower, and movement through the room becomes part of the experience.

The works in “The Power of Presence” stayed visually connected to the wall rather than behaving like freestanding sculpture.

For designers: think of relief as part artwork, part wall treatment.

Lesson 3: Quiet color does not mean a quiet surface

“Summit of Strength” relied on a restrained, nearly monochrome palette, yet it was one of the exhibition’s most visually active works because its shadows changed as the viewer moved.

Other pieces, including “Almost Spring,” “Whispers by the Shore” and “Toward the Horizon,” used similarly controlled color to let texture and depth carry more of the visual weight.

For designers: restrained relief can remain interesting without competing with furniture, textiles or finishes.

Lesson 4: Material knowledge matters

Bovt’s research into gypsum-based materials is relevant because relief is not just an image. It has weight, depth, fixing requirements and a surface that must live in a real interior.

Those questions become especially important in high-traffic residential, hospitality and public spaces.

For designers: discuss weight, mounting, cleaning and surface protection early, not after a piece has been selected.

Lesson 5: Bring the artist in early

Relief depends on wall dimensions, sightlines and lighting. All three are normally decided before the styling phase.

Bovt’s earlier commissioned works for private collections in Belgium and the Netherlands already placed his practice in dialogue with specific interiors.

A piece such as “Toward the Horizon” benefits from being seen from a distance, while “Summit of Strength” works differently when approached frontally and then viewed from the side.

For designers: if relief is part of the concept, involve the artist while the drawings can still change.

“The Power of Presence” ultimately made a simple design argument: relief works best when artwork, wall and light are treated as one system.

Its nine works — from “Almost Spring” to “Alaska Rising” and “Summit of Strength” — showed that a wall does not have to remain a passive background.

In Bovt’s words: “A flat surface shows an image. In each relief, I try to give form to what we cannot see but can always feel.”

For designers, the practical translation is even simpler: a wall can do more than hold art.