Martin Boyce

Boyce's objects and installations take off from common building features and other details of the urban landscape. The sequence of fake Ventilation Grills, mounted here on two gallery walls, are parenthetically entitled Punching through the Clouds after the optimistically poetic description of skyscrapers by the pioneering modern architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). Whereas Mies propogated the virtues of simplicity, clarity, and new materials, Boyce faces the overall collapse of utopian, Modernist ideals that encompassed a belief in progress and social equality.