Palmer Gallery is pleased to announce Spooky Action At a Distance, a solo exhibition of new work by London-based artist Max Boyla (b.1991, Edinburgh). Bringing together recent paintings on satin, sculptural works, video, and sound, the exhibition examines how images form, how materials behave, and how perception is shaped by both physical and conceptual frameworks.
The exhibition title - “spooky action at a distance” - refers to a term originally used by Albert Einstein to describe quantum entanglement, a phenomenon in which two particles behave as a single system regardless of the spatial distance between them. Boyla uses this notion as an analogy for the way different elements within an artwork, or within an exhibition, can appear interconnected even when their relationships are not immediately visible.
Boyla’s satin paintings are produced through a multi-stage process in which lengths of poly-satin are folded, creased, compressed between boards, and then submerged in a hot dye bath containing a mixture of dyes, pigments and binder. During this stage the fabric behaves as a three-dimensional object; distant points on its surface are brought into contact in ways that later affect the final image. When unfolded and stretched, the material reveals forms created by how the dye has settled and dried, with no brushwork throughout. The resulting surfaces appear active and responsive, and the images resist stable interpretation, often seeming to hover between abstraction and landscape.
The exhibition also includes sculptural works created from repurposed domestic components. A steel sink fitted with a coloured internal light and a length of black, mica-speckled kitchen countertop cut with a circular aperture are reconfigured into objects that recall astronomical or geological forms. Through these transformations, Boyla highlights shifts in scale and context, and the way everyday materials associated with domestic or industrial use can carry broader symbolic or environmental implications.
A sound installation composed from a slowed and reconfigured instrumental track introduces a temporal dimension to the exhibition. Played on a loop from an enclosed, illuminated space, it creates a persistent, mechanical rhythm that reframes the viewer’s movement through the gallery. A video projected onto the window in the gallery space completes the installation: what appears to be footage of shifting cosmic structures is in fact an accidental phone recording made during a cycle ride, underscoring Boyla’s interest in the emergence of imagery without direct artistic control.
A private view will take place at the gallery on Friday 9th January, 6-8pm.
