Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture

In a city as old as London, the fortieth birthday of a civic institution would, at first instance, not be a particularly auspicious or exciting event. While forty marks the onset of middle-age in individuals, a forty-year-old art gallery is comparatively spritely, not yet even the dignified bookend of a half-century. And so it is with the Hayward, in the Southbank Centre, which has just celebrated its ruby anniversary with a nubile exhibition entitled ‘Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture’.

The exhibition of installation modern art incorporated works from ten artists drawn from Latin America, East Asia and Europe. Installation art usually provides for a more engaging exhibition experience than traditional forms, not so much inviting as forcing the spectator’s active involvement. By making the viewer immerse themselves physically in the artwork, installations incorporate the viewer’s experience into the wider story of the piece, grabbing the experience and making it an essential element of the artwork in a way traditional art only touches upon. The effect is magnified where the piece allows for group participation, with one person’s whoop of delight or sigh of consideration building into the experiences of others.

‘Psycho Buildings’ generated more of a whoop than a sigh. The installations gave the viewer a completely different take on the gallery, and the city of London generally. Gelitin’s normally, proceeding and unrestricted with without title (2008) was situated on the roof and took the form of a pool cascading over the edge of the gallery. The location of the work was such that the London Eye was backgrounded to the surreal scene of visitors rowing boats across a pool which disappeared infinity-style into the sky. Similarly, Tomas Saraceno’s Observatory, Air- Port-City (2008) created an otherworldly bubble above the gallery, an ethereal cloud into which viewers climbed and looked out over central London. By placing the pool and the cloud high in the sky on the roof of the gallery and far above the slowly meandering River Thames, Gelitin and Saraceno fused two very different conceptions of London – the historic nautical city of the East India Trading Company and hulks, and the aspirational modern city leading the information age. Air-Port-City and normally, proceeding invited the viewer to reflect on the city below and the future above, providing a conduit between the character of the city and the experience of the viewer.

Compared to traditional forms, installation art also allows for a more complete representation of the artist’s perspective, immersing the viewer in a stand-alone and monolithic testament to the artist’s world view. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Los Carpinteros’ Cold Study of a Disaster (2005) and in Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star 1/5 (2008); both artists brought their personal histories to the fore, at the core of their artworks.

Cold Study presented as an explosion of everyday household items thrown into a mid-apocalyptic stasis, while the Cuban collective behind Los Carpinteros created a full-scale apartment caught mid-explosion, complete with collapsing walls and furniture and furnishings flying through the air. Where Cold Study was frozen at the point of destruction, Fallen Star was set immediately after. Korean-born Suh smashed his childhood home in Korea with the New England apartment where he lived as an art student, intricately recreating the contents of both houses. Both works hit the viewer with the kind of jarring haphazardness and raw personal reflection that has made Tracey Emin infamous. The pieces spoke of the impossibility of compartmentalising experiences in life: while each experience can be isolated in time, a person is the product of all their experiences. When the disparate experiences, walls and furniture are taken together, one can build a life (or an apartment); when one attempts to keep them apart, the results can be explosive.

Rachel Whiteread’s Place (Village) (2006–08) contrasted markedly with the uplifting pieces of Gelitin and Saraceno, and the dystopian pieces of Los Carpinteros and Suh. Whiteread brought together more than 200 doll houses, arranging them in rows on three hillsides, each house illuminated by a single bulb. It was a bizarre sight: the dimly-lit village evoking the eeriness of a wintry Scandinavian fishing hamlet. The soothing pastel tones of the lights seemed almost ironic in the context of what appeared to be an isolated, low-lying village, clinging to the hills of an inhospitable environment. Place (Village) was poignant and sad, and provided an oasis of calm introspection after the optimism of Gelitin and Saraceno, and the frightening immediacy of Los Carpinteros and Suh.

The forty-year mid-life crisis happens when someone finds themself on the wrong side of youth without an emotional connection to their daily experiences. By inviting visitors to run the gamut of emotions, the Hayward has proven itself forever young, by inviting visitors to do the same. +

1 Gelitin: normally, 1 proceeding and unrestricted with without title, 2008. Mixed media. Courtesy the artists. Photo: ©Stephen White. 2 Tomas Saraceno: Observatory, Air- Port-City, 2008. Mixed media. Courtesy the artist and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York. Photo: ©Stephen White. 3 Los Carpinteros: Show Room, 2008. Cinder blocks, fishing nylon, Ikea and B&Q furniture. Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery, New York. Photo: ©Stephen White. 4 Los Carpinteros: ‘Frio Estudio del Desastre’ 2005. ©Los Carpinteros, Courtesy Sean Kelly Gallery.