A core element of Martin Boyce’s practice is his reinterpretation of modernist design: from the furniture of Jean Prouvé, to the buildings of Corbusier, to the film credits of Hitchcock. Ventilation Grills was inspired by the opening sequence to Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest where the metropolis is rendered as a grid: a series of intersecting lines mapping out a city plan, or as seen in the façade of a modern building, or a drain cover in the street. Boyce’s use of the geometric grid allows him to trace the afterlife of Modernism and its utopian ideals that deteriorated by the end of the 20th century. Ventilation grills, ubiquitous feature of modern-day life, are recreated here as ghostly objects.
MARTIN BOYCE (SCOTTISH, 1967)
Acid etched brass
Acquired in 2024
