Lot 7: In the Air

Martin Boyce (B. 1967) In the Air steel and oil on jesmonite in artist's frame 86 3/8 x 61 5/8 x 1½in. (219.3 x 156.5 x 4cm.) Executed in 2011

156.5 x 4cm.

The Modern Institute/Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow. Private Collection, London.

‘It’s all about the landscape, I’m interested in the psychological landscape, the physical landscape, the built environment, the things we pass through every day and then occasionally catch a glimpse of and maybe see something that has meaningful resonance' (M. Boyce, A Partial Eclipse, London 2013). A large-scale work spanning two metres in length and over a meter and a half in width, In the Air embodies Martin Boyce’s fascination with modernist architecture and design, as well as his attraction to the natural landscape. An artist known for his immense installation pieces, Boyce’s integration of both text and reductive textured backgrounds result in an arresting and elegant aesthetic distinctly his own. Created the same year as Boyce’s 2011 Turner Prize winning exhibition entitled Perforated and Porous (Northern Skies), In the Air is informed by classic pieces of furniture by Arne Jacobsen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Jean Prouvé among others, which have been the focus of many of Boyce’s sculptural installations. For his Turner Prize exhibition, Boyce reinterpreted the four concrete ‘trees’, designed in 1925 by avant-garde sculptors Joël and Jan Martel, to create a modernist garden using geometric aluminium leaves to produce a dappling effect, casting light over the space. Continually engaging with both the language of early modern art and his immediate natural surroundings, the muted, earthy colour palette is characteristic of Boyce’s works since 2005. In the Air integrates both Boyce’s fascination with geometry and the landscape into a two dimensional image. The use of reductive, angular text combined with a background painted to emulate the grains of wood, also connect this work to Boyce’s previous award winning concrete trees. The loose and intuitive application of paint in the background of In the Air, especially in the top left hand corner, is juxtaposed by the precise tight format in which the text is painted in the foreground. The angular lettering, combined with the diagonals created by the wood pattern behind, give the work a depth and three dimensionality within a two dimensional plane, highlighting Boyce’s inherent relationship with sculpture.