Martin Boyce In Starlit Nights, 2024

The work is from the artist’s series of mobiles that characteristically imbue the formal vocabulary of contemporary urbanism with moments of unexpected tenderness and beauty.

The work consists of a metal rail, hanging by a chain fastened to a suspension point, from which smaller rails hang, each with clustered bundles of metal chains in different groupings. These elements are balanced against a luminous disc made from a sheet of open-work lacquered metal.

The mobile combines elements from urban and semi-domestic settings but also recalls organic shapes, in this case the branches of a weeping willow tree. The flowing chains play on the ambivalence between associations with industrial materials and the invocation of the emotional and physical characteristics of the willow tree. In the context of this work, circular a cut-out, a recurring motif in the artist’s oeuvre, doubles as sun or moon, creating the sense of an entire landscape.