Psycho Buildings, Qu'est que c'est?
It's been a while since I enjoyed an exhibition as much as , currently at the . I made the mistake of going on a Sunday afternoon, when the South Bank is thronged with people, and I still emerged with a smile on my face. That's not to say that the show is light on substance - exploring how we interact with our physical surroundings raises questions about how we relate to the world - and this show manages to explore this serious theme in a playful but satisfying way. While I was going through the exhibition I kept thinking about a big hardback book I'd had as a child called The House - filled with utopian visions of houses: houses underground, houses in the desert and (my favourite) houses in trees. This exhibition was like a version of this book for adults.
Highlights included by , a Korean artist who represents the cultural clash that he experienced when he moved to the US with a literal clash of houses. If this sounds clumsy or obvious it's not - the scale of the houses is impressive and they are skilfully and humorously rendered. On the opposite side to the collision, the wall of the US house is cut away and you see a slice of what the inhabitants' life is like. The Korean house is less open, though it is possible to gaze through the broken shutters. Suh has another remarkable work in the exhibition, , a dazzling representation of the staircase and floor of an apartment he inhabited in New York. When I say it's dazzling I mean it - the sculpture is worked in orange polyester, and it fills the room with colour while also hanging above it; a staircase that doesn't quite reach the floor and cannot be ascended. It was a great representation of how the memory of a place can feel.
by (The Carpenters) shows another sort of collision or explosion, but in a much more detached way. The work freezes fragments of breeze-blocks, furniture and glass as they fly through the air. It's very reminiscent of the work of , but where Parker's work often uses items from her or other people's past, the items in Show Room are without character. It is the anodyne, ideal show room shown in unusual disarray. There are no books, no clothes, no hint that these rooms are inhabited by human beings. The single note of threat is a large piece of glass sticking into a couch. I also found a delicious shiver in collection of dolls houses, Place. Walking into a dark room you see a miniature suburb, each house illuminated by its own little bulb, it's very pretty. When you look more closely however, you see that all of the houses are empty. The effect is like a photograph, where some unexplained event disrupts an everyday scene.
The most photogenic pieces were up on the roof, and they were a lot of fun too. I didn't bounce around in myself, but it looked very arresting, as did on the Hayward's roof. So much better than the usual collection of dusty models and CAD drawings that tend to represent architecture in the gallery space.
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