You know when you’re looking at art and somehow it manages to convey feelings or sensations that are going on for you at that particular moment in time? I had that experience over and over again this week as I walked round the new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London called When Forms Come Alive: Sixty Years of Restless Sculpture.
I’m not sure what I was expecting from this show, although if I’m honest I was just ticking a ‘show them some sculpture’ box for my students before the end of the semester. I definitely wasn’t expecting to be moved by it like I was. Looking at some of these works was almost the equivalent of physically touching and feeling them with your eyes. In the words of the curator Ralph Rugoff, they invite us to look with a ‘tactile gaze’.
When Forms Come Alive is a show exploring the history of contemporary sculptural forms that are static and yet have some sort of dynamic tension in them. The different levels of energy emanating from the objects is palpable. The exhibition is constructed like a sort of theatrical set, with lighting and sound adding to the drama of it. These inanimate objects are the actors on the stage, communicating softly and then loudly, one taking over from the next, speeding up the pace and then slowing it down, as you move through the spaces of the gallery.
‘Restless’ is a great word to describe the sculptural forms in this show. There were works by several big-name artists including Ruth Asawa, Phyllida Barlow and Lynda Benglis, and others whose names were unfamiliar to me despite some having had decades-long careers. Almost everything was interesting. But there were three works in particular that I totally connected with because they perfectly conveyed in material form how I feel about my body, my energy levels and my state of mind at the moment. The concept that ‘form is feeling’ has never been more in evidence for me.
My first ‘ooh wow!’ moment came quite quickly, in response to the Polish artist Olaf Brzeski’s two untitled works from his Little Orphans series (2009). In these artworks he has twisted raw slabs of cast iron in such a way that they resemble thick spongy mattresses which are sort of draped, or rather slumped, over lightweight chairs. The heavy forms bend around the backs and seem to almost slide off the wooden seats, as though they don’t have enough energy to sit up properly. Gravity is pulling the objects down and it feels like only a matter of time before they slip off the seat completely, or collapse the chair under their weight.
There’s a sense of exhaustion conveyed in these forms, a tangible tiredness that pulls you in. It made me think about being stuck on the sofa half-asleep late at night, lounging uncomfortably and desperately wishing I was in bed but being unable to muster the energy to move.
