M
mgk
Guest
Generally I don;t appreciate so-called modern art but this one seems different
and I wish I could visit Tate to visit it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturevideo/?bcpid=3887194001&bctid=44523778001
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/explore/
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/default.shtm
Miroslaw Balka’s box of darkness is disturbing in its historical echoes but beautiful as well. The Times
Miroslaw Balka's black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and throught-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill. The Guardian
The latest commission in The Unilever Series How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka is a giant grey steel structure with a vast dark chamber, which in construction reflects the surrounding architecture - almost as if the interior space of the Turbine Hall has been turned inside out. Hovering somewhere between sculpture and architecture, on 2 metre stilts, it stands 13 metres high and 30 metres long. Visitors can walk underneath it, listening to the echoing sound of footsteps on steel, or enter via a ramp into a pitch black interior, creating a sense of unease.
Underlying this chamber is a number of allusions to recent Polish history – the ramp at the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz, for example. By entering the dark space, visitors place considerable trust in the organisation, something that could also be seen in relation to the recent risks often taken by immigrants travelling. Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.
from telegraph.co.uk
Very few works of art have actually scared the wits out of me, but Miroslaw Balka’s How It Is – the 10th in Tate Modern’s hugely successful annual commissions sponsored by Unilever – was among them. At least, it did at the beginning. The walk from the main entrance of the Turbine Hall to the place where you first encounter Balka’s sculpture is as long and as drawn-out as possible. Your first sight of the vast steel container fills you with apprehension because you see its gigantic hulk from rear. It’s not until you are almost on top of it that you grasp how ugly, brooding, and threatening it is.
Part of me wondered whether, like Carsten Höller’s slides a few years ago, this was one of those works of art I could mark “must miss”. The container measures 13 metres high, 10 metres wide and 30 metres long. It is mounted on supports two metres high, so that, if you wish, you can walk under it without crouching. But if you do so, you’ll find that having several tons of steel held up by thin supports just above your head feels so oppressive that you’ll soon want to escape. But there is no escape.
Polish-born Balka has long been obsessed with the fate of the Jews in his country, who were all but exterminated at Auschwitz. The piece is intended to evoke a shipping container, a cattle car, or a gas chamber – and part of his point is that, as much as anything else, it was the spaces themselves, both exterior and interior, that must have been so frightening.
And yet, when you actually stand in front of the entrance to the container, there is something undeniably seductive about its dark depths, and once you’ve taken your first step up the long, steep ramp, it is impossible to turn back.
As you step into the interior, you find it has been lined with black, light-absorbing velvet to create a blackness blacker than any you have ever known.
There is nothing for it but to move forward, groping your way in the dark, aware of the presence of other people but afraid that with each step you take you’ll find yourself engulfed in a void. With my long-suppressed fears of premature burial and being trapped in lifts suddenly reawakened, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay.
In fact, you quickly discover that it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been because the interior space is not so deep that you ever lose sight of the entrance. The simple act of turning around to watch other visitors outlined against light as they advance towards you dispels panic.
If Balka’s intention was to make us conscious of what such container- like enclosures must have been like for the victims of the Nazis, then I think the piece fails. Nothing can do that. We can get out; they couldn’t; we have light; they didn’t; we are safe; they weren’t. I’m not even sure how original the conception is, since the history of art is full of black holes, including Douglas Gordon’s recent, infinitely more frightening Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
As a sculpture, Balka’s work impresses. As a theatrical experience it’s a damp squib. But maybe I experienced the piece under the wrong lighting conditions. What was true at 9.30 on a sunny morning may feel very different late on an autumn afternoon, or worse, at night.
and I wish I could visit Tate to visit it:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturevideo/?bcpid=3887194001&bctid=44523778001
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/explore/
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/unilevermiroslawbalka/default.shtm
Miroslaw Balka’s box of darkness is disturbing in its historical echoes but beautiful as well. The Times
Miroslaw Balka's black hole at Tate Modern is terrifying, awe-inspiring and throught-provoking. It embraces you with a velvet chill. The Guardian
The latest commission in The Unilever Series How It Is by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka is a giant grey steel structure with a vast dark chamber, which in construction reflects the surrounding architecture - almost as if the interior space of the Turbine Hall has been turned inside out. Hovering somewhere between sculpture and architecture, on 2 metre stilts, it stands 13 metres high and 30 metres long. Visitors can walk underneath it, listening to the echoing sound of footsteps on steel, or enter via a ramp into a pitch black interior, creating a sense of unease.
Underlying this chamber is a number of allusions to recent Polish history – the ramp at the entrance to the Ghetto in Warsaw, or the trucks which took Jews away to the camps of Treblinka or Auschwitz, for example. By entering the dark space, visitors place considerable trust in the organisation, something that could also be seen in relation to the recent risks often taken by immigrants travelling. Balka intends to provide an experience for visitors which is both personal and collective, creating a range of sensory and emotional experiences through sound, contrasting light and shade, individual experience and awareness of others, perhaps provoking feelings of apprehension, excitement or intrigue.
from telegraph.co.uk
Very few works of art have actually scared the wits out of me, but Miroslaw Balka’s How It Is – the 10th in Tate Modern’s hugely successful annual commissions sponsored by Unilever – was among them. At least, it did at the beginning. The walk from the main entrance of the Turbine Hall to the place where you first encounter Balka’s sculpture is as long and as drawn-out as possible. Your first sight of the vast steel container fills you with apprehension because you see its gigantic hulk from rear. It’s not until you are almost on top of it that you grasp how ugly, brooding, and threatening it is.
Part of me wondered whether, like Carsten Höller’s slides a few years ago, this was one of those works of art I could mark “must miss”. The container measures 13 metres high, 10 metres wide and 30 metres long. It is mounted on supports two metres high, so that, if you wish, you can walk under it without crouching. But if you do so, you’ll find that having several tons of steel held up by thin supports just above your head feels so oppressive that you’ll soon want to escape. But there is no escape.
Polish-born Balka has long been obsessed with the fate of the Jews in his country, who were all but exterminated at Auschwitz. The piece is intended to evoke a shipping container, a cattle car, or a gas chamber – and part of his point is that, as much as anything else, it was the spaces themselves, both exterior and interior, that must have been so frightening.
And yet, when you actually stand in front of the entrance to the container, there is something undeniably seductive about its dark depths, and once you’ve taken your first step up the long, steep ramp, it is impossible to turn back.
As you step into the interior, you find it has been lined with black, light-absorbing velvet to create a blackness blacker than any you have ever known.
There is nothing for it but to move forward, groping your way in the dark, aware of the presence of other people but afraid that with each step you take you’ll find yourself engulfed in a void. With my long-suppressed fears of premature burial and being trapped in lifts suddenly reawakened, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stay.
In fact, you quickly discover that it’s not nearly as bad as it could have been because the interior space is not so deep that you ever lose sight of the entrance. The simple act of turning around to watch other visitors outlined against light as they advance towards you dispels panic.
If Balka’s intention was to make us conscious of what such container- like enclosures must have been like for the victims of the Nazis, then I think the piece fails. Nothing can do that. We can get out; they couldn’t; we have light; they didn’t; we are safe; they weren’t. I’m not even sure how original the conception is, since the history of art is full of black holes, including Douglas Gordon’s recent, infinitely more frightening Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
As a sculpture, Balka’s work impresses. As a theatrical experience it’s a damp squib. But maybe I experienced the piece under the wrong lighting conditions. What was true at 9.30 on a sunny morning may feel very different late on an autumn afternoon, or worse, at night.