martin boyce-interior/exterior

In a series of new works developed specifically for presentation in Venice, Martin Boyce has devised a lyrical installation for seven inter-connected rooms of the second floor of the 15th-century Palazzo Pisani (S. Marina).
The artist transforms the fading grandeur of this palace with suspended, geometric chandeliers, sculptural autumn leaves, stepping stones, brass letters, tables and benches – all altered from the everyday into an atmospheric, poetic landscape. Boyce has set out to ‘delve into the city’s interior landscape’ and with this exhibition he conflates the internal and external and echoes the labyrinthine nature of Venice, creating a heightened sense of displacement and abandonment.Martin Boyce (born 1967) lives and works in Glasgow. He is one of Scotland’s most prominent artists and is well known for his sculptural installations that recall conventional public spaces – the playground, pedestrian subway, discarded or abandoned sites – to form a cohesive and immersive environment, one that the writer Will Bradley calls, “both a proposition about social space and a dreamscape in itself”. Individual works comprising of sculptural forms recall familiar public furniture: benches, bins, signage and lighting. Drawing on the iconography and subsequent production of modernist design, these objects take on an alternative life by being displaced from their original context and purpose.