Miroslaw Balka: How It Is
Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
Deep black spaces tend to be avoided by sane-minded people, fearful of not knowing where they are going, what they might find or how they may cope without the sensory help of sight. Yet this is precisely the sort of experience offered by Polish artist Miroslaw Balka in a startlingly simple yet highly effective structure inside the Tate’s vast turbine space. Settting it against the distant hum of the still working turbines within the building helps confirm the hard-edged mechanical atmosphere.
Having covered up most of the windows in the hall so there is little ambient light within the building, Balka has created a dark space in which he has constructed a monumental steel box standing on stilts, which at first appears solid and impenetrable, taking on an almost permanent feel. Visitors can walk round or underneath examining or even admiring the engineering involved. It is the far end of the box, furthest from the entrance, however, that the fun – or, rather, the anxiety – really begins.
The rear of the box is open, a ramp leads up to the floor, positioned some 12 feet above the ground, but all that can be seen is a deep black space, an apparent void. The walls are lined with black velvet, which does not reflect light; the floor and ceiling are also black. It is space that invites you to enter and explore without in any sense knowing quite what you are likely to find. Cautious visitors walk up the ramp, peer inside, ponder and then leave. Others combine prudence with risk by edging slowly round the velvet wall, finding comfort in the reassuring touch of the fabric.
The brave, confronting any worries about black holes, walk slowly inside, carefully placing one foot in front of the other. The light, such as it is, gets fainter the further inside you get. Other people are hard to see and waving one’s arms around or tentatively attempting to “feel” your way offers some safety, but bumping into other visitors has to be a distinct possibility. It is only as your eyes adjust, which can take a few minutes, that vague shapes of others can be seen and suitable manoeuvres take place.
At the deepest end, turning round reveals the open, now relatively well-lit exit, though some linger, feeling a measure of control other the experience, almost floating in the darkness. With its sense of entering the unknown, confronting at some level deep anxieties of the dark and unknown, Balka’s minimalist installation – one large steel box – has no fixed meaning, we bring to it what we will.
For the artist, the work has powerful autobiographical association, in that his parents suffered under Nazi persecution in the war, where structures such as this were part of mass exterminations. The rectangular form, reminiscent of a giant shipping container, train wagons or imprisonment, is none of these things, yet sets up uneasy echoes that stir up half-forgotten memories. Whatever the association each of us might bring to How It Is, Balk’s observation that “You can shape this yourself” may offer some comfort in this often-troubling installation.
Emmanuel Cooper
How It Is continues until April 5 2010
