Perceptions and Reflections
From frames to perceptions and reflections, this week’s blog is all about the current exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, Space Shifters.
Richard Wilson 20:50 1987
As I walk into the show my first reaction is instant; I feel travel sick, as if I am about to step foot on a large boat and go on a long journey. So strong is the smell of oil, it takes me a few seconds to realise it is permeating from the Richard Wilson piece upstairs. I’d already checked waiting times and was warned that a group of 50 university students were about to arrive so headed straight up. The smell gets stronger. I’ve seen the Wilson piece a few times now, originally at the Saatchi Gallery in St John’s Wood, but this is the first time I have had to queue. It is definitely worth it even if I am feeling queasier by the minute. 20:50 is a sculptural intervention where engine oil floods a whole room with a narrow passageway for visitors to walk to the centre. The dark, smooth and reflective surface is perfectly still. As I walk into the work, I am aware that I am surrounded by a beautiful yet repulsive liquid but this sensation starts to shift as the passageway gets narrower and the liquid starts to melt away in space. Wilson’s oil both reflects the architecture of the gallery and distorts it. Windows, doors and ceiling become abstract patterns and I feel like I am lost in an endless environment, neither building nor oil. I am struck by the material’s surface as well as its effect on me.
Anish Kapoor Sky Mirror, Blue 2016
As I step out, Anish Kapoor’s Sky Mirror, Blue makes the same impression, I am drawn to the real polished surface as well as its power to distort. The concave mirror brings the clouded grey sky down and frames it within a beautiful blue filter. London’s sky is transformed instantly for me.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres “Untitled” (Golden) 1995
Next I pass through Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ golden beaded curtain. I enjoy the sensation of actually touching a work as well as it asking me to walk through it. I love the play of light on each mini disco ball. I am reminded of this downstairs with Yayoi Kusama’s hundreds of stainless steel orbs. Both highlight how repetition can lead to intrigue, light reflecting on and off a surface making an object appear to change state; solid to liquid.
Yayoi Kusama Narcissus Garden 1966-2018
The curtain leads me through to a room of other works but it’s Roni Horn’s purple glass sculpture on the floor nearby that I want to look at first. Her cylinder looks both solid and liquid as well as heavy and sensual and the cast ‘super-cooled liquid’ changes appearance as I walk round it.
Roni Horn Untitled (“Everything was sleeping as if the universe were a mistake”) 2012-13
Downstairs, Alicja Kwade’s installation needs me to help make the work. And nothing is quite what it seems, I move around and through a steel-framed structure with double-sided mirrors and objects in an attempt to work out which objects are real and which are reflections. Rocks magically change colour, disappear and reappear and spaces open up or close off. The steel frame is the constant and it is me moving around which alters my perception and makes me question what is real and in front of me! It is a maze-like conundrum which I both enjoy and am a little wary of.
Alicja Kwade WeltenLinie 2017
Most people are drawn to mirrors and most of the works in this show are made from materials or surfaces that reflect. A reflection brings with it the temptation to compare real and reflected. That is, reflections can distort, they can shift our perception of what is real in both space and time. They can also appear to transform a state of a material, liquid to solid or solid to liquid or even neither or as with Wilson's engine oil. It is us as that are part of the distorting process. Much like the framing I talked about in last week’s blog, as well as the artist, we as a viewer have the capacity to reflect on our perceptions, we are part of the reflected surface.
Do go and see Space Shifters at the Hayward Gallery until 6 January 2019:
https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/whats-on/exhibitions/hayward-gallery-art/space-shifters