Marian Goodman Gallery now represents Daniel Boyd, a rising Indigenous Australian artist. Boyd is one of the few Indigenous Australian artists represented by a major blue-chip gallery outside his home country.
The gallery mounted a solo show for the Sydney-based artist earlier this year, and will include works by him in its booth at Art Basel in Switzerland this June. An exhibition at the gallery’s Paris space is also forthcoming.
Boyd has steadily been building his reputation as one of the country’s most closely watched artists. His work was included in the main exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, organized by Okwui Enwezor, as well as the 2016 Sydney Biennale and the 2015 Kochi-Muziris Biennale.He also was the subject of major solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (in 2022) and the Gropius Bau in Berlin (2023).
Born in Gimuy/Cairns on the northeast coast of the country, Boyd has heritage that spans several Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations including Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, Yuggera and ni-Vanuatu.
Boyd is best known for his portraits and landscapes that build on the Indigenous Australian tradition of dot paintings, which began to receive greater attention in the international art world after artists from Western and Central Australia rose to fame. Boyd’s paintings, however, also aim to depart from this tradition, moving it toward Gestalt theories of perception and away from narrative storytelling.
“Daniel is the most highly regarded contemporary artist of Australia from his generation,” Philipp Kaiser, the gallery’s president and partner, told ARTnews in an emailed interview. “As much as his work deals with specific historical concerns, it also expands on larger pressing issues that are relevant globally.”
Kaiser said he first encountered Boyd’s work at the 2015 Venice Biennale, where he “was struck by the simplicity and elegance of the paintings and the complex underpinnings of how his works negotiate issues of representation, identity, history, and culture.”
Since then, Kaiser has been following Boyd’s career and finally was able to meet him last year during the run of the Gropius Bau exhibition, via artist Anri Sala, who is also represented by Marian Goodman. That led to the gallery show in January, which Kaiser said received “a great response from institutions, private collectors, and critics.”
Kaiser added, “Daniel’s artistic practice and concerns resonate with our program, which champions artists with ambitious and visionary work. The Gallery has had a history of providing a critical US platform for international artists since its founding and developed an ever-more global focus since the early ’90s. We’re thrilled that Daniel is joining us.”
