Suspended Fall
2005
Medium
Powder coated steel, chain, wire and chair parts
Suspended Fall 2005 is a hanging mobile with six balanced
elements joined by lengths of wire and powder coated steel. Each of the
elements consists of a sawn section of vintage Jacobsen Series 7
chairs, which the artist bought in Berlin. Hung freely in the gallery
space, the individual elements of the work can move independently or as
a whole when prompted by air movement or direct contact. Designed by
Arne Jacobsen (1902–1971) in 1957, the Series 7 chair was styled for
modern living. Although the ideology and ambition of Jacobsen’s
modernism have faded, the classic plywood moulded chair is still
being manufactured using the same methods and materials, and it has
become one of the most popular chairs of the late twentieth and early
twenty-first century.
Suspended Fall makes reference to the
art of Alexander Calder (1898–1976) and his distinctive, colourful
mobiles of the 1930s which in turn were influenced by the abstract
work of Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) and Joan Mir¿ (1893–1983). The work
explores and reflects the cross-fertilisation of ideas and forms between
art and design during the period of early twentieth-century
modernism. It is one of an ongoing series of mobiles that Boyce has been
making since 2001. It has been exhibited in the following
exhibitions:
This Storm we call Progress, Arnolfini, Bristol 2005;
Material Intelligence, Kettles Yard, Cambridge 2009; and
The 4th Auckland Triennial, New Zealand 2010.
Martin Boyce’s work explores the visual language of modernist
architecture and design. Drawing on its iconography and history of
production, classic pieces of furniture by Arne Jacobsen, Charles and
Ray Eames, Jean Prouvé and Charlotte Perriand, among others, have
often been the focus of Boyce’s attention. Boyce’s selected objects
engage with the ethos of modernism: democratic and mass-produced,
they reflect an ambition for what can be understood as a utopian
vision – a re-imagining of society on egalitarian terms. Boyce is
also interested in how meanings change over time, in particular how
the significance of particular objects alters as society changes.
Displaced from their original ideals and context, Boyce’s objects
take on an alternative life.
Further reading
Martin Boyce: For 1959 Capital Avenue, exhibition catalogue, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt 2002.
Martin Boyce Undead Dreams, exhibition catalogue, RomaRomaRoma, Rome 2003.
Martin Boyce, Zürich 2009
Clarrie Wallis
May 2010
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/boyce-suspended-fall-t13283