NO LAND WITHOUT A LORD
Sacristy Gallery
February 2, 2024 to March 23, 2024
Nuelle Terre Sans Seigneur (‘No Land Without a Lord’) ran the old French adage. An adage that signified the nobility’s gamut of lordly rights, privileges, and jurisdiction that came with their estate. To follow the family lineage of a noble house is to arrive at a past that was often mythical, if not consciously fabricated. What they did with this bestowed power was wildly self-indulgent. This inequality is, in no way, unfamiliar to us; North America’s wealth disparity is approaching numbers proportionate to the ancien régime. The gentry then becomes a perfect conduit to investigate the parasitic nature of the ultra-rich; the ‘little kings.’
Feudalism, it seems, has been conjured from the dead. Boynton’s No Land Without a Lord investigates this resuscitation through photographs of aristocratic debauchery, knight errantry, and haughty confrontation. Epiphany’s Sacristy space is illuminated by lightboxes that mimic its historic stained glass. But where one would find religious virtuosity in stained glass, they find something quite different in Boynton’s photographs. The genteel lord in Boynton’s work is lazy, pretentious, violent, and wholly ignoble.
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
NO LAND WITHOUT A LORD
Sacristy Gallery
February 2 to March 23, 2024
Nuelle Terre Sans Seigneur (‘No Land Without a Lord’) ran the old French adage. An adage that signified the nobility’s gamut of lordly rights, privileges, and jurisdiction that came with their estate. To follow the family lineage of a noble house is to arrive at a past that was often mythical, if not consciously fabricated. What they did with this bestowed power was wildly self-indulgent. This inequality is, in no way, unfamiliar to us; North America’s wealth disparity is approaching numbers proportionate to the ancien régime. The gentry then becomes a perfect conduit to investigate the parasitic nature of the ultra-rich; the ‘little kings.’
Feudalism, it seems, has been conjured from the dead. Boynton’s No Land Without a Lord investigates this resuscitation through photographs of aristocratic debauchery, knight errantry, and haughty confrontation. Epiphany’s Sacristy space is illuminated by lightboxes that mimic its historic stained glass. But where one would find religious virtuosity in stained glass, they find something quite different in Boynton’s photographs. The genteel lord in Boynton’s work is lazy, pretentious, violent, and wholly ignoble.
Click HERE for more information on gallery hours and private appointments.
Andrew Boynton (b.1999) uses the photographic tableaux to investigate the conflicts that afflict our heavily polarized contemporary moment through restagings of the past. His interdisciplinary practice is informed by the Medieval and Enlightenment aristocracy and their indulgent lifestyles. His work is in multiple private and public collections, including the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection. In 2022 Boynton was awarded Chicago’s Luminarts Fellowship. Boynton’s work has been shown at MANA Contemporary as well as Perspective Gallery.
Andrew Boynton (b.1999) uses the photographic tableaux to investigate the conflicts that afflict our heavily polarized contemporary moment through restagings of the past. His interdisciplinary practice is informed by the Medieval and Enlightenment aristocracy and their indulgent lifestyles. His work is in multiple private and public collections, including the Joan Flasch Artist Book Collection. In 2022 Boynton was awarded Chicago’s Luminarts Fellowship. Boynton’s work has been shown at MANA Contemporary as well as Perspective Gallery.
