Installation view, Hold, 2021. Kunstverein München. Photo: Constanza Meléndez
Patricia L. Boyd
Patricia L. Boyd’s work finds form through an inquiry into its own matters of production and presentation, and often extends to address the infrastructures—physical, economic, institutional—within which it is made and held. Encompassing sculpture, photography, writing and video, the work is often characterised by a display of the negative: through the use of inversion, elision, removal. A forthcoming exhibition will take place at Vienna Secession in Autumn 2022.
Installation view, Hold, 2021, Kunstverein München. Photo: Constanza Meléndez
Boyd’s most recent solo exhibition was Hold, 2021, at Kunstverein München. Here, indexical photograms of windows, made in the artist’s apartment, were scaled to those of the institution; windows which themselves spread atmospheric conditions, the passage of light and shadows, back onto the photograms. Elsewhere, thresholds and places of transition in the exhibition rooms were foregrounded, interrupted and intervened within.
Installation view, Hold, 2021, Kunstverein München. Photo: Constanza Meléndez
Installation view, Wall Pieces, 2019. Christian Andersen, Copenhagen. Photo: Malle Madsen
The series Wall Pieces, 2017, are negative casts made with a mixture that includes recycled cooking grease collected from restaurants. When first exhibited, each sculpture is embedded into the wall of the gallery it is shown in. After the initial exhibition, the work is extracted along with the surrounding section of wall in which it was enclosed, which thereafter remains permanently attached to the cast.
In other recent works and exhibitions Boyd has utilised overlooked, used or discarded materials from her own life and previous work. A video, Sweepings, 2019, collages stills of personal, practical and professional to-do lists into a continuous stream; Men Assembling: 12/10/2019, 23:55:00 – 12/11/2019, 00:06:48, Channel 4 Television, 2013-2019, revises one of the artist’s previous works using a recording of it being broadcast on British TV.
Installation view, Me, not, not-me, 2020, Front Desk Apparatus, New York. Photo: Joerg Lohse
In the exhibition Me, not, not Me, 2020, Boyd presented uprooted garden weeds and old photos of flowers in bloom, both posted to the artist by her mother.
Operator, 2017, HD video, color, sound, wall. 12:56 minutes
In Operator, 2017, footage of a sound stage shot from four tracking cameras was edited according to a debt repayment scheme. A wall built in close proximity to the projection prevents a distanced viewing perspective.
-
Patricia L. Boyd (b. 1980 in London) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions include Kunstverein München (2021), Front Desk Apparatus, New York (2020), Christian Andersen, Copenhagen (2019), Cell Project Space (with Rosa Aiello), London (2019), 1856, Melbourne (2018), Potts, Los Angeles (2018), 80WSE, New York (2017), Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2014). Previous group exhibitions include Braunsfelder, Cologne (2022); Kunstverein Braunsweig (2021); Stadtgalerie Bern (2020), Bonner Kunstverein (2019), Secession, Vienna (2018), The Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2017), Steirischer Herbst, Graz (2014), 12th Lyon Biennale (2013). Boyd’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art Monthly, ArtReview, Frieze, Kaleidoscope Magazine, Mousse Magazine, and Texte zur Kunst. In November 2022 a solo exhibition by Boyd opens at the Vienna Secession.