Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Serpentine Gallery

    On Thursday January 6th we went to the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens.  The walk to the gallery would have been more enjoyable had it not been raining since there were sculptural pieces along the path, such as the Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor.  This piece is from an outdoor exhibit called Turning the World Upside Down consisting of large, outdoor sculptures.  Even though it was raining, the mirror beautifully reflected the grey clouds in the sky, it is able to capture the atmosphere of the changing weather in the garden which create this interaction between the viewer and the environment.
    The Serpentine Gallery exhibited work by Philippe Parreno in the form of video art and sculpture.  There were large screens set up in each room that each played a short film in which sound and light had major roles.  The sounds also lead the viewer through the gallery itself, trailing off or calling from the other room to attract the audience and to move them around.  I personally felt his films were eerie, especially Invisibleboy and June 8, 1968.  The latter piece seemed eerie to me because the lack of human motion, I did not realize the film was recreating the scene of a funeral until after I saw it.  The film Invisibleboy was frighteningly suspenseful as the sounds become louder and spookier throughout the piece and as the little boy encounters the strange light-scratched figure.  When the film was over, there was snow being created outside the window, making the viewer aware of both the inside and outside space.  The piece The Boy From Mars had the snow falling at the beginning of the film but it had stopped by the end when the window curtains were pulled up.  A connection between all these pieces seemed to be an absence of a subject.  There was a presence of light and the sense of sound.  Reality was also questioned through the ghost-like qualities of the film between the boy's imagination and the unusual stillness of the people.  There was a continuity of light and sound being manipulated to effect the mood of the viewer that tied all the pieces together as well.

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