DANIEL BOYD + ZAC LANGDON-POLE
Splendide Mendax
4 December 2021 – 22 January 2022
STATION | MELBOURNE
Splendide Mendax is a collaborative exhibition by Daniel Boyd and Zac Langdon-Pole. Inspired by Horace’s famous oxymoron to tell a noble lie, Splendide Mendax examines complex notions of perspective, history, and the colonial exotifying gaze, and seeks new forms of seeing and understanding. Derived from the Latin meaning for ‘nobly false’, a modern interpretation of ‘splendide mendax’ is now masked with a paradoxical weight and an untranslatable brevity. Perceived by some to be ‘splendidly deceiving’ while others understand it to mean ‘glaringly false’, the phrase holds numerous murky yet profound readings. Boyd and Langdon Pole’s collaborative exhibition celebrates this ambiguity and its multiplicity of knowing.
For Splendide Mendax, these two conceptually-motivated contemporary artists present a suite of paintings, puzzle works and sculptural objects. Langdon-Pole’s recombined puzzle works and ceramics consider the testing of knowledge and ingenuity. Langdon-Pole plays with the universality of a single puzzle piece, investigating the nature of information, and its meeting, connection and place in a larger misleading image. Compatible in gesture, Boyd’s paintings serve as windows into the multiple histories and lateral knowledge systems that inform the world, resisting a singular narrative. Treated in his enigmatic style, Boyd contemplates the canonized, deceiving notions Australian history through the imagery of monarchs, caves, waterfalls and skulls.
Splendide Mendax reflects on the complex human tendency to claim absolute truth based on limited perception and the dark ‘beautiful’ lies told throughout history.
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Splendide Mendax
Splendide Mendax 2021
installation view
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (LAFTAL) 2021
oil and archival glue on canvas
56.0 × 51.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
On Ducks and Rabbits (i) 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
44.5 × 33.0 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled 2013
oil, acrylic, glitter and archival glue on canvas
94.0 × 94.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
451 Million Years 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
152.0 × 198.5 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (GNKLASD) 2021
oil, acrylic, charcoal and archival glue on canvas
66.0 × 102.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
Time’s Skein (Unwound) 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
152.0 × 198.5 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (INYIM) 2021
oil, charcoal and archival glue on canvas
87.0 × 87.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
Hemispheres (Twister Template) 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
78.0 × 99.5 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (WWCBNTTS) 2021
oil, acrylic and archival glue on canvas
162.0 × 99.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
Melt 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
198.5 × 152.0 cm framed
Zac Langdon-Pole
Inter Alia 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
44.5 × 33.0 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (BCIHMP) 2021
oil, acrylic and archival glue on canvas
108.0 × 67.0 cm
Zac Langdon-Pole
On Ducks and Rabbits (ii) 2021 2021
recombined jigsaw puzzles
44.5 × 33.0 cm framed
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (WHTTROMN) 2021
oil, charcoal and archival glue on decommissioned Natural History Museum, London, skull box
55.0 × 82.0 cm (dimensions variable)
Zac Langdon-Pole
Re Translatio Studii (i) 2021 2021
bowl fragments, brass staples
25.5ø × 9.0cm (dimensions variable)
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (IATPIP) 2021
oil, pencil, acrylic and archival glue on decommissioned Natural History Museum, London, skull box
55.0 × 82.0 cm (dimensions variable)
Zac Langdon-Pole
Re Translatio Studii (ii) 2021 2021
bowl fragments, brass staples
19.0ø × 12.0 cm (dimensions variable)
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (IAHFAAIWTGBT) 2021
oil, ink and archival glue on decommissioned Natural History Museum, London, skull box
55.0 × 82.0 cm (dimensions variable)
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (IITCTAIOAP) 2021
oil paint, archival glue on board
60.0 × 60.0 cm
Daniel Boyd
Untitled (KSIABFL) 2021
oil, acrylic, charcoal and archival glue on canvas
24.0 × 18.0 cm
