KYLE ALDEN MARTENS - SPUN THROUGH THE HEEL

From April 25 to June 1, 2024.

Kyle Alden Martens’ first solo exhibition with Patel Brown presents a boudoir of seductive forms and textures that rub up against one another in a gentle orgy of frottage. With a queer-tinted sense of artifice, Martens works intimately with leather, silk, wood, jewellery, and other materials. His work speaks to the perennial quest to “fit in” and the universal desire to find a place – metaphorical and literal – for oneself. But as much as we seek comfort and acceptance, we also have the libidinal urge to stand out or stand apart, to shock. For Martens, sometimes a chair is just a chair and sometimes it is a jewellery box, sometimes it is both or neither. Keys allow access to new spaces and, with them, new possibilities, while purses contain and protect what is inside, not unlike our own bodies. Here, in "Spun Through the Heel," we see a suit embedded with rolled-up belts become a bedazzled headboard for a bed.