high-grade steel, garden hose
Courtesy Martin Boyce, The Modern Institute / Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow
In his works Martin Boyce takes up the forms of modernist design and, by minimal changes, transforms them into autonomous sculptures. For years a tree designed by Joel and Jan Martell out of concrete has served him as a thematic canon for a variety of his works. For the Cologne Sculpture Park, Martin Boyce has had this elementary motif cut into the surface of three park bench seats, the perforations of which have turned them into an ornament. The benches have been upended at a 90-degree angle so that, side by side, they resemble a folding screen. A garden hose has been draped through the motif and in this way seems to symbolize the basic elements of the park, or express the hosing-down operation. The sculpture illustrates one moment in time that has, through this artistic medium, now become permanent.
Martin Boyce lives and works in Glasgow. In 2011 Boyce was the winner of the highly renowned Turner Prize, organised by the Tate Gallery, London.