A brief but vivid encounter with a physical sense of wonder at Hauser&Wirth London.
It is a dark, still, windowless gallery. High ceiling. Concrete floor. The only sounds: steps, shuffles, an undulating hum of ocean waves from a video installation in the adjoining room, murmurs, the thumping throb of traffic outside. The only light: white recessed downlights casting faint shafts of cold white at various angles. In the middle, ten square feet, a dark gray platform: a sort of stage whence spring or whereto land, in neat square bundles, the silver threads of Ttéia 1C. They could be sunrays piercing through a handful of abandoned vents in the roof of a derelict silo, or holes in the deck of a disused submarine. The whole space feels subterranean, mysterious, sequestered, yet peaceful - like a lost world. The light shifts softly from one vantage point to another, at a single stroke revealing and concealing, and at every moment transforming what is seen.
It is a peculiar but intensely satisfying illusion. The still silver threads are at once solid, firm, tangible - and ethereal. They appear and disappear against the unreflecting darkness. The visual deception is stark and satisfying, manifest yet unspoiled by the clarity of deception.
It is a peculiar way of experiencing, feelingly, how something can be two things at once. It rather reminded me of Simon Blackburn discussing sentences in everyday language which, unlike those of formal logic, do not carry a clear, binary truth-value. In Anton Chekhov's Lady with Lapdog, he points out, Anna Sergeyevna tells her husband that her regular visits to Moscow are to see a doctor about an internal complaint - "and her husband believed her, and did not believe her". How many a thought exhibit this duality. And here is Lygia Pape's Ttéia 1C giving a physical reality to this odd, illogical, quantum way of being.
Besides this, there is also a sense of wonder at the strangeness of what is usually perceived as boring everyday physical reality. A glimpse at the uncanny absurdity of the world, but also its exciting versatility. The physical reality of cities is normally very plain, familiar, normal and boring: dull the entrance gates to the Underground, dull the seats on the train, dull the cars and the buses, dull the uniform buildings, dull the people, dull the shops. No encounter with the sublime on a daily commute into central London. Yet here is wonder: simple, unassuming, still. A very honest trick, no less effective for its honesty. I was very glad.
