Martin Boyce End Papers, 2025

The work fuses sculpture, typography, and architectural references. It consists of a woodblock panel, drilled with spaced holes, onto which polished steel letters spelling out its title are mounted, and next to it, a print that was made from it. Mounted in a steel frame, the pairing evokes the tradition of woodblock panel printing. Yet, the steel letters on the wooden panel makes further printing impossible, therefore rendering it obsolete and making the print placed next to it unique, both the first and last to be made from it.

The typography of custom-made hand-painted steel letters now includes slightly curved shapes. The stylized alphabetical lettering constitutes a recent formal development based on the font the artist had conceived in 2006, in the course of his engagement with Jan and Joel Martel’s Concrete Trees, exhibited at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.