Lee Bul at The Hayward

A new name (perhaps) to me

Thinking and looking back over recent years I find that my visit to The Hayward Gallery last week was perhaps the first time there.

And at its heart

 Anyway very happy to report it's a pretty good place to enjoy contemporary Art in its' 50th year (it's July 1968 that it opened) - I feel that recent days have had a Brutalist edge (architecturally) and this a pretty strong example of that ethos.

The featured artist at present at the gallery is a South Korean woman called Lee Bul and there's quite a range of styles and themes that are on show.

The most popular week seemed to be Via Negativa II (which we were told by one of the gallery stewards had seen very long queues assemble to experience the work (it's a maze like piece that the visitors traverses).

Via Negativa II (outside) 

The experience  of this work (according to the gallery) is..


“The installation provides an intense and disorienting experience that disrupts the viewer's perceptual and cognitive bearings, and alludes to the tenets of apophatic philosophy, which posits that divine nature is beyond the understanding of the rational human mind and can only be comprehended by defining what it is not – ‘the negative way' – rather than what it is"

Lee Bul has worked as a performance artist and her work has been political - most of the work on show was sculptural and varied form hard metallic finishes to  some softer more natural works  -some work appeared 'playful' but the ideas behind them it seems were less so.

This is called Willing to be Vulnerable