Life in the Fast Lane

What happens when art and architecture converge, and artists are left to their own devices to transform a structure inside and out? A wild and bizarre display of works for one of the world’s most architecturally unique exhibitions, creating habitat-like structures and architectural environments that are mental and perceptual spaces as much they are physical.

Boating lake complete with dock and 3 small wooden boats, installed on one of the Hayward’s sculpture terraces by Gelitin. Photo David Levene

Ten artists from around the world were given ‘carte blanche’ to transform Hayward’s exterior and interior in celebration of the gallery’s 40th anniversary for an exhibition entitled ‘Psycho Buildings,’ which gets its name from a book published by the late Martin Kippenberger in 1988 of black and white photographs of “psycho buildings” — odd structures in odd states of abandonment or demolition.

Spilling out onto Hayward’s 3 outdoor sculpture terraces, the installations bring you through a series of atmospheric, spatially dynamic constructions that use light, color, smell and design to trigger overwhelming instinctive responses that heighten your attention to the relationship between you and your surroundings.

The 10 architectural environments include works from Atelier Bow-Wow, Michael Beutler, Los Carpinteros, Gelitin, Mike Nelson, Ernesto Neto, Tobias Putrih, Tomas Saraceno, Do-Ho Suh and Rachel Whiteread. The exhibit is supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund.

“The exhibition was inspired by the radical architecture of the Hayward, which has never conformed to what an art gallery should look like.” said Ralph Rugoff, director of the Hayward Gallery and curator of Psycho Buildings.

“Most architecture tries to repress our awareness that there are multiple ways that we can we can relate to, and use, spaces we occupy. In that sense, this show really explores the architectural unconscious.”

“A lot of urban spaces are very regimented, and a ‘psycho building’ is something that breaks out of this and reveals that our relationships with space can be extremely varied.”

“Architecture is usually designed with one thing in mind: to shop, read, or look at pictures.” Rugoff added. “These artists call attention to the many ways we look at space.”

Rooftop Lake entitled Normally, Proceeding by Gelitin
In a rather bizarre installation by Austrian art collective Gelitin — entitled Normally, Proceeding and Unrestricted With Without Title — you can go rowing on the roof in 1 of 3 odd wooden boats floating in 4 feet of water, installed on one of the Hayward’s sculpture terraces.

Artificial rooftop lake by the Austrian collective ‘Gelitin.’ Photo David Levene

Photo Reuters / Xinhua

Photo Cate Gillory / Getty

The water is the same level as the existing wall so it looks as though you can paddle right off the edge — although you won’t, Rugoff assures.

“There’ll be people looking up from the Hungerford bridge and they’ll just see heads moving, they won’t know what they’re doing.”

In addition to the pond, water overflows and cascades 49 to 65 feet (15 – 20 meters) down to the road below.

Gelitin also built a floating dock for the dubious crafts which were nailed, glued and cobbled together from reclaimed timber and junk-store furniture. The handles of the oars came from legs of an old chair with brass castors on the ends.

Life Tunnel by Atelier Bow-Bow
Atelier Bow-Wow, a pair of Japanese architects, the only architects in the show, created their steel-plate Life Tunnel — a crawl space that makes its angular way between the mezzanine and the floor below, with a chimney section that makes a journey up to the top floor.

‘Life Tunnel’ by Atelier Bow-Bow. Photo Xinhua

Photo AP

Photo Johnny 2005

Photo David Levene

It booms like ductwork when you walk through it, the pitch lowering as the level drops.

The tube leads down to the gallery’s least quirky spaces, where Rachel Whiteread’s collection of internally lit dolls’ houses

Place (Village) by Rachel Whiteread
Rachel Whiteread’s eerie installation titled Village is made of 250 spooky doll houses, each illuminated by a single light bulb, shown in Britain for the first time.

‘Village’ by Rachel Whiteread. Photo Clara Molden

Photo David Levene

Photo David Levene

Village is a townscape of mock Tudor and generically suburban doll houses in rows as if set on a hillside, constructed from travelling crates, and displayed in a space illuminated only by the lights in the houses themselves.

The houses are empty, as if abandoned, the smallest of which are actually hung on the walls. It’s like a suburb repossessed by the dead.

“I started collecting them 20 years ago and I’ve never really known why.” Rachel said.

The artist said she jumped at the chance to be part of the exhibition. “It’s such a weird building and I think this is going to be a really great show. These things are always quite stressful though. It’s easier when you’re on your own in the studio.”

Staircase V by Do Ho Suh
Korean artist Do Ho Suh is the only artist in the exhibition with 2 spaces — his Staircase V on the top floor is a beautiful, delicate woven structure of semi-translucent red fabric entwined with light bulbs and power sockets, all in red mesh, filling a large and otherwise empty gallery. Even the wall switches and banisters have been made from this red fabric.

‘Staircase V’ by . Photo Getty

Photo Stephen White

In the center of the room, a staircase fashioned from the same stiffened red fabric descends from a false ceiling without quite reaching the floor — a ghostly life-sized re-creation of the basement staircase in the artist’s apartment.

Fallen Star by Do Ho Suh
On the mezzanine below is the 2nd work by the artist, Fallen Star — a pair of model houses, on a scale of 1:5. The sculpture inspired by The Wizard of Oz is a house crash of the artist’s Korean childhood traditional home in Seoul hurtling into the 4-storey New York apartment building in Providence, Rhode Island that he lived in for many years when first moved to the US.

Do Ho Suh’s ‘Fallen Star.’ Photo Getty

“There [are] 2,000 interior components, every piece of wiring and plumbing is specially made.” said Rugoff.

With an oriental obsession for detail, there is perfectly fabricated debris everywhere. All the paraphernalia in the houses — from furniture to crockery, clothes and books, FedEx boxes on the hall table and scattered dollar bills on the floor — is lifelike in every way.

Do-Ho Suh hopes to build these miniaturized models at full scale in the future.

Photo Johnny 2005

Photo David Levene

Another view of Fallen Star. Photo David Levene

Frozen Study of a Disaster by Los Carpinteros
Havana-based Cuban artists Marco Castillo and Dagoberto Rodriguez, who make up the collective Los Carpinteros, created ‘In the Frozen Study of a Disaster’ — an apartment caught mid-explosion that looks like a bomb blast.

Los Carpinteros’ Frozen Study of a Disaster. Photo Sean Kelly Gallery

Photo Johnny 2005

Photo David Levene

Chunks of wall is sent flying, the sofa is showered in shards of glass, and the air is filled with dismembered chairs, tables, fridges, beds and electrical items. It’s like a frozen moment in a movie special effect, all suspended in mid-flight on lengths of fishing line and thin steel wires in an instant of explosive disaster.

The artwork made from IKEA and B&Q furniture painstakingly taken apart in mock-explosion makes the tables, cupboards and doors seem flimsy and papery. You walk past the installation, not through it.

As one Carpintero said, “It’s like marriage. Everything starts out as a wonderful dream and ends up a f***ing nightmare.”

The other Carpintero replied, “Hey, but you’ve never been married, man.”

Photo Johnny 2005

Photo Clara Molden

Photo David Levene

Observatory, Air-Port-City, 2008 by Tomas Saraceno
On another sculpture court is a huge, inflatable geodesic sphere made of shimmering translucent fabric by the German-based Tomas Saraceno from Argentina. The outdoor iridescent observatory changes the gallery’s outside appearance entirely.

Inflatable dome entitled ‘Observatory, Air-Port-City’ by Thomas Saraceno.
Photo Cate Gillory / Getty

You can climb an external staircase and bounce around on top of the squishy membrane, or enter the hollow structure below through an air-lock.

When you look up you’re not only able to see the sky-line, but also the brave gallery-goers who have climbed to the top to lie 20 feet in the air on a transparent pillow.

“It will be a pretty vertiginous experience.” said Rugoff.

Photo Cate Gillory / Getty

Observatory, Air-port-city by Tomas Saraceno. Photo David Levene

Photo Cate Gillory / Getty

Life Fog Frog by Ernesto Neto
Brazilian artist Ernesto Neto’s Life Fog Frog of 2-domed sensory environments made of Lycra opens the show — a walk-in fabric dome with pendulous bags of spice hanging from it — a sculpture fragrance of pepper and cloves.

As you climb the stairs to Do Ho Suh’s Fallen Star, you see that Neto’s work is split in 2 by an enormous horizontal membrane.

Ernesto Neto’s installation ‘Life Fog Frog 2008.’ Photo Clara Molden

Photo Stephen White

Neto has done pretty much the same thing since the late 1980’s, filling pouch-styled sacs of stretchy organza and other translucent textiles with strong smelling spices, creating pendulous, pungent forms.

His MDF and Lycra double-humped dome is like “being enveloped in a womb-like space.” said Rugoff. He hopes being inside “will change the way people behave,” and bring the inner child out in us.

Memory of HP Lovecraft by Mike Nelson
British artist Mike Nelson’s 2 rooms with plastered walls transform an entire gallery into a scene of haunting devastation, as if an unseen beast had freed himself from the space by brutally gouging, clawing, chewing and tearing through the walls in a frantic flurry of splinters and wood chippings.

‘To the Memory of HP Lovecraft’ by Mike Nelson. Photo Clara Molden

Photo Stephen White

In the remake of the artist’s ‘To the Memory of HP Lovecraft (1999)’ previously installed at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, it’s the subtitle of a story by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges that was inspired by the US horror writer.

“It’s kind of a parody of a parody of a parody.” said Nelson, standing in the room which is meant to look as it does, of a creature causing general destruction.

Nelson also barred the windows and installed a large trapdoor over the stairs — as if to keep us out or the ‘thing’ in.

Nelson himself just went mad in there, in an exhausting orgy of very calculated, premeditated and staged destruction, taking an axe to walls the English artist put up himself.

“I’m sort of enjoying it. But you have to use an axe so it’s quite exhausting, each mark is done by hand.” he added, with holes in the wall around him, splinters all over the floor, and feces of the beast.

Michael Beutler
German artist Michael Beutler built his own loom-like machine to help create hundreds of sheets of tissue paper on chicken wire structures that will be an almost forest-like environment labyrinth of panels for people to walk through.

“He never knows what it’s going to be until he’s done it. The title isn’t decided on until he’s finished.” said Rugoff.

Michael Beutler’s as-of-yet untitled work. Photo David Levene

Venetian, Atmospheric Cinema by Tobias Putrih
Slovenian artist Tobias Putrih created a 30-seat fanciful cinema of curved wooden walls and ceiling which twinkling stars and moving clouds are projected onto. You can watch films about artists such as Robert Smithson, Gordon Matta-Clark and Gregor Schneider, and architecture on one of the Hayward’s roof terraces.

“Architecture is usually functional and built to restrict the use of space.” said Rugoff. “Some people say architecture is inherently totalitarian and fascistic and these artists are all trying to reinvent the space in all sorts of different ways.”

The Psycho Buildings: Artists Take on Architecture exhibition at the Hayward, Southbank Centre in London runs from May 28 through August 25 2008. Southbank Centre is the UK’s largest art center, occupying 21 acres in the midst of London’s most vibrant cultural quarter on the South Bank of the Thames.

For details, visit the Hayward Centre website.

Sources: Southbank Centre, Guardian, London SE1, Architect’s Website, and The Independent

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