never thought I'd spend a few hours
looking at Invisible art
art about the unseen 1957~2012
took me by surprise
despite the serenity and silence within the
exhibition spaces
there's lots to see
untitled (a curse)
Tom Friedman hired a practising witch
and instructed her to cast a curse onto
an eleven inch spherical space which
hovers eleven inches above the empty plinth
no-one seemed to dare touch
language becomes important when you're looking
at a piece of white paper or walking into a space
as people give careful attention to reading the
pale grey accompanying texts
{the gallery playing an amusing joke on us as we squint}
we are told there are actors among us
hired by Bethan Huws, to change our
perception and polarity within the gallery
we speculate as to who it might be ....
the lady coughing loudly into a tissue?
a man who comments on a piece as we stare
like Bruno Jakob, but not for 1000 hours
Jakob's Invisible paintings use
light/touch/air/breath/snails
we bend and move to catch sight of silver trails
energy/brainwaves/love/water
there's a gentle humour to his work
poetic ~ the unseen green
instructions
simply typed on a4 paper by Yoko Ono
HAND PIECE
Raise your hand in the evening light
and watch until it becomes transparent
and you see the sky and trees through it.
1961 Summer
Beijing artist Song Dong keeps an invisible
diary written in water on a stone
the freedom to write freely secretively
there's a darker side to invisibility
a tunnel, pitch black, all you can hear
is your breath, other people's breath,
shuffling, uncertainty
The Ghost of James Lee Byars (1969/1986)
then a room with two cooling systems
the superfine mist and that certain scent
as we discover, the containers are filled with
20 litres of water, previously used to wash
the bodies of murder victims before autopsy
Aire by Teresa Margolles
this clinical scene a far cry from the violent
streets of Mexico City
what are these artists trying to say?
are they fooling us or prodding at the limits
of visibility, presence, the public and perception?
