PARIS.- Esther Schipper is presenting Unhome, Martin Boyce’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, and his first in the Paris space. It is part of two concurrent exhibitions of Boyce’s work opening on the occasion of Paris Gallery Weekend, the second show, titled Walk with Me, being hosted by Galerie Natalie Seroussi.


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In Unhome, Boyce invites viewers to reconsider the boundaries between the intimate and the domestic, introducing a sense of eeriness and uncertainty into our perception of familiar spaces. At our gallery located on Place Vendôme, he unveils a collection of new sculptures and photographic works, brought together in an immersive installation that oscillates between decay and renewal, offering a sensitive meditation on the passage of time.

Martin Boyce has reworked and reformulated objects from the built environment, developing his own pictorial language based on a reading of the formal and conceptual histories of applied and decorative arts, architecture and urban planning. His works simultaneously pay homage and deconstruct or reinterpret these traditions. The use of unlikely elements and materials, freed from their function as demarcation or restraint, creates oddly affecting sculptures.

In the main room, to the right upon entering, a sculptural installation transforms the space, darkened by grey filters on the windows and a curtain made from debris netting. A large-scale chandelier, composed of 90 hand-blown pink glass modules, is suspended from a black steel structure. The shape of the chandelier with its tentacle-like metal chains may evoke associations with sea creatures, while the tapered structure is reminiscent of spider legs. The juxtaposition of fragile, delicately hued glass and industrial steel also creates a sense of misplacement, as if the chandelier is presented in a state of construction or renovation.

The form of the chandelier is inspired by a 1960s design by Carlo Scarpa, while the metal structure recalls Marcel Duchamp’s famous Bottle Rack (1914). The glass modules – produced by the Centre International de Recherche sur le Verre et les Arts Plastiques (CIRVA) in Marseilles – borrow a component shape from the Concrete Trees by Jan and Joël Martel, created for the 1925 International Exhibition of Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. These forms have been a recurring source in Boyce’s formal vocabulary since 2005.

Nearby, a delicate sculpture is placed facing a mantlepiece mirror. Do Not Look Away (2025) consists of a folded brass sheet evoking the shape of a mask, mounted on a display stand. Its polished surface, etched and inked with stylized letters, spells out the work’s title in reverse, which can thus only be deciphered in the mirrored reflection. This typography is an evolution of a typeface Boyce developed in 2006, as part of his research into the Martel brothers’ work. Since the late 1990s, masks have been a recurring motif in Boyce’s practice.

Two brass sculptures, mounted on the wall at hand height, take the form of door handles: Out of This Day is adorned with a perforated yellow metal disc, resembling a solar figure, and Into This Night is topped by a stained white lunar disc. Linked by chains reminiscent of weeping willow branches, the sculptures form mobile-like compositions with the appearance of stylized landscapes, where nature and industry intertwine.

Similarly, the installation Somewhere There Are Trees blends nature and artifice and implicitly invites the outside world into the gallery interior through the presence of wax-coated paper leaves, which, as if moved by a breeze, collect in the corners across the exhibition space.

On the walls, three works created in 2025 – Dead Stars, Last Snows, and End Papers – fuse sculpture, typography, and architectural references. Each consists of a woodblock panel (in black, red, and blue, respectively), drilled with spaced holes, onto which polished steel letters spelling out the titles are mounted, and a print that was made from it. Mounted in a steel frame, the pairs evoke the tradition of woodblock panel printing with the steel letters rendering the woodblock obsolete and unable to produce more prints, each print presented as the last.

Inconspicuously placed at the bottom of two walls are a pair of ventilation grills bearing cut-out letters that form the words Other and Rooms. The work hints at what lies out of sight, what remains hidden – in this case, the imaginary air ducts concealed behind the walls, theoretically connecting the two vents. Boyce often integrates everyday elements such as power outlets or ventilation grilles into his work; objects whose functional banality tends to render them invisible.

In the second half of the exhibition, Boyce presents a new photographic series created specifically for this exhibition. Images of door handles from the artist’s own home in Glasgow are arranged in four diptychs: two photographs of either side of the same door, each showing a different handle. Mechanically connected yet never seen together, the handles form both a single entity and two distinct elements: one facing inward, the other outward. The door, from a house built around 1908, bears a century of human presence. The series contributes to a broader reflection on the uncanny: the familiar home becomes a stage for a diffuse strangeness, perceptible in everyday objects which, once isolated, reveal their symbolic power.



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