translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville,
151214 : Johnen Galerie Martin Boyce – Stellar Remnants
Johnen Galerie
Martin Boyce – Stellar Remnants
28.11.2014 – 24.01.2015
Starwars
by Raimar Stange
The well worth seeing exhibition "Stellar Remnants" by Martin Boyce again certifies the interests of the Scottish artist and Turner Prize winner in (interior) architecture, design and art history. In the main room of the Johen Galerie, Boyce has installed a surprisingly poetical ensemble in whose centre stands a fireplace which was constructed by him.
A fireplace? The device, "A Passageway for the Sky", 2014, and deliberately mounted too high, doesn't only look like a fireplace at home but reminds one of a dark theatre stage. And he plays on Rene Magritte's most famous painting "The perforated time", 1938, in which a steam engine uses the passageway of a fireplace in order to steam into a living room. Boyce's fireplace is bordered by a frame whose branch-like design has been influenced by the form language of the French designer couple, Joel and Jan Martel, more exactly: from whose concrete trees which were conceptualized by the brothers in cubist style in 1925. Inner and outer room are then interwoven with each other by the sculpture "Dead Star Constellation (looking down on an empty pool)", 2014, which stands in the same room, and a weeping willow of rusty steel isn't standing out in the outer room but in the middle of the gallery. Two small lamp frames are hanging in the branches of the artificial, seemingly poetic-depressive tree. The homely atmosphere which is still suggested by the fireplace is specifically counteracted by this skeletal tree. A further lamp frame stands next to it, its title "Dead Star (red)", 2014, is also a play on the presentation "Stellar Remnants", namely the moment in which things are extinguished, the "stars cadavers" is just as idiosyncratic as the functionally inept design of the artist. An intelligent play of dualism is enmeshed in the exhibition: inner against outer, artificiality against naturalness as well as applied and free art appear here simultaneously and against one another to terminate their alleged contrarieties in the occurring dialogue.
Johnen Galerie
10117 Berlin, Marienstraße 10
Tel: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 30
Fax: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 50
E-mail: mail@johnengalerie.de
http://www.johnengalerie.de
Opening hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00 hours
Mehr Texte von translated and summarized by: Liz Wollner-Grandville
151214
Johnen Galerie
10117 Berlin, Marienstraße 10
Tel: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 30, Fax: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 50
Email: mail@johnengalerie.de
http://www.johnengalerie.de
Öffnungszeiten: Di - Sa 11:00 - 18:00
Johnen Galerie
10117 Berlin, Marienstraße 10
Tel: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 30, Fax: +49- (0)30- 27 58 30 50
Email: mail@johnengalerie.de
http://www.johnengalerie.de
Öffnungszeiten: Di - Sa 11:00 - 18:00