Thursday 21 June 2012

Invisible-Hayward Gallery


Well the South Bank Center really has pulled out all the stops for the Festival of the World, and it has made a real blockbuster of a show with Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957-2012. The show starts with some of the most influential artists of all time with works such as Yves Klein, famously known for his Klein Blue, and looks further with work by Yoko Ono and Andy Warhol. 
The Utopian ideals of the invisible art, the invisible architecture, whereby mankind had forgone secrecy and developed into a free forming world. The first room seems to take an almost chronological step through from 1957 where Klein presented an empty space (The Specialization of Sensibility in the Raw Material State into Stabilized Pictorial Sensibility, The Void) as an art work which up to 3000 people queued to view; however, I am not hear to give you a history lesson. What I will tell you is that this is possibly the best exhibition of the year so far in my opinion, each room and stage holds a genuine interest. My personal favorite is Lai Chih-Sheng's Life Size Drawing. This is a tracing of every line in the room, so the work is literally the largest possible work that could fit in the room, without having any real physical material presence. This work kind of goes under the radar until you see the label on the wall, and then you begin to notice, you begin to realise you are standing in the middle of a huge drawing, a piece of work that is so big, yet it has no imposing influence on us. 
In all i would definitely recommend this one, a few tips though; first, if you have attended the Wide Open School (if you haven't you should!!) take your ticket along for reduced entry to the show; and second, if you can get the show handbook, its really good, a great read.

In Short:- 5/5 Best show of the year so far, a great variety of work ranging over the past 55 years of invisible art. 

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