Exhibition: Ernesto Neto

Ernesto Neto (b.1964) The Edges of The World
Hayward Gallery Southbank Centre

I arrived at this exhibition with extreme levels of anticipation, having been an avid follower of Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto’s work for years now via publications and internet searches. Fascination grew from the first moment I laid eyes on his sensual drooping vesicles. However, my initial reaction on entering was one of disillusionment- how had I come to be standing in the middle of a child’s pappy guide to anatomy? Moving onto the next room I found the Neto I was looking for in horizonmembranenave. Stretched tulle and the laser-cut wooden skeletal structures work in unison to create a bizarre tunnel at the centre of which is flavour flower womb domus . Here clusters of people had settled in the various nooks and soft parts, quite clearly in no rush to return to the craziness of London central. These environments are intended to be immersive, an expulsion from the frantic reality of the outside world. Admittedly I couldn’t help but feel animosity toward the linear edges of the room and harsh light fittings jolting my senses back to the reality of Hayward Gallery.

Neto’s interactive sculptures sit squarely in the participatory art category, indeed, without people swimming around the rooftop pool, beating the drum or lazing in the flavour flower womb domus the work seems to shift towards the cheerless and forlorn.

Artist: Miroslaw Balka

Miroslaw Balka (b.1958) How It Is (2009)
10th Unilever Series
Tate Modern Turbine Hall

It may seem a bit old-hattish to mention this mid-way through 2010, but encountering this sculpture left me both physically goose-pimpled and mentally wobbly, and for that, it deserves a mention.

How It Is consisted of a Kraken sized black crate on stilts (13 metres high and 20 metres long) to be entered via an equally dramatic ramp. Once inside, the self-imposed challenge was to walk through a soupy- thick darkness and touch the opposite wall. There is a sense of spacial manipulation that is ideal for an investigation into the oppressive effects of certain types of architecture on the psyche. The ramp of this ‘box of darkness’ is an allusion to the ramp at the entrance of the Ghetto in Warsaw, the crate itself possibly to the railed 'cattle cars' that transported Jewish prisoners to concentration camps. I only learnt of this subtext after the fact and it certainly did supplement my post-experiential perspective, which had fastened on notions of a psychoanalytical ‘return to the womb’. Entering into such a black-hole of darkness was not only disorientating but also left one with sense of lost physical boundaries. If not for my friend clinging to me as we made our way to the other side, I would no doubt have abandoned ship almost immediately.