Martin Boyce

Martin Boyce, born in Glasgow in 1967, processes modernist design objects and fragments, adopting an investigative approach which is motivated both aesthetically and culturally. To this end, Martin Boyce utilizes the repertoires of forms and materials of such significant architects and designers as Arne Jacobsen, Charles and Ray Eames, Mies van der Rohe and R.M. Schindler. The objects are robbed of their original aesthetic and function and transformed into temporally and spatially dynamic installations that remind us of visions of modernism from a "better future" and at the same time make us aware that the latter has still not arrived.  His works are focussed primarily on European and American modernist architecture and design. "If you translate a style from one historical epoch into another," says Martin Boyce, "you can resurrect the zeitgeist, the social and cultural circumstances of that epoch. On this journey through time, however, the aesthetic develops its own ideological messages, based, for example, on notions of taste and exclusivity."  Martin Boyce creates new, hitherto unknown spaces that mediate between the ideas of yesterday and today. For the exhibition at the Schöttle Gallery, he has installed two new, hanging "tree sculptures".