Boîte-hors-de-valise 17

Davis Lisboa, Boîte-hors-de-valise 17, 2024, oil on linen, 50 × 50 × 3.5 cm (19.7 × 19.7 × 1.38 in).

The work takes Marcel Duchamp’s Boîte-en-Valise—conceived between 1935 and 1941 as a portable museum containing miniature reproductions of his key works—as its point of departure. Rather than simply reinterpreting it, the painting translates this reference into a pictorial language, generating a new set of images that form a visual archive around this iconic piece. This shift—from the readymade object to painting—relocates the inquiry within the domain of form and color.

Formally, the composition recalls Kazimir Malevich’s early semi-abstract experiments, where recognizable structures are reduced to essential geometric configurations. Planes of color intersect and overlap, producing a spatial tension that oscillates between figuration and abstraction. This process of reduction marks a transition toward an autonomous visual vocabulary centered on the relationship between form and surface.

The work is part of The Paintings Section from Davis Museum Barcelona, a project that continues a lineage of artists who developed their own exhibition frameworks. Duchamp, Robert Filliou with Galerie Légitime, and Marcel Broodthaers with Musée d’Art Moderne, Département des Aigles redefined the museum as an artistic construct. Within this context, the painting operates as an extension of that legacy, articulating a series of images that reinterpret these references within a shared framework.

Executed in oil on linen, the piece balances material precision with conceptual clarity. It occupies a point of intersection between formal investigation and reflection on the exhibition context, maintaining an ongoing dialogue between artwork, museum, and viewer.