Invisible: Art about the Unseen 1957-2012, Hayward Gallery - review

Lending the audience an active role in the formation of the works, the Hayward has committed a whole floor to the discrete history of invisible art
Invisible Art, Hayward Gallery, London, Britain - 11 Jun 2012 Photo:Tony Kyriacou / Rex Features
12 June 2012

In 1958, Yves Klein put on a Paris show in which he claimed that an empty room was occupied by force fields of artistic sensibility. So began a discrete history of invisible art, to which the Hayward has given an entire floor.

Much here playfully questions the foundations of art, shaking up the idea of the artist as a gifted creator and the viewer as an observer of their genius.

In the Eighties, Andy Warhol stood on a plinth in a nightclub, and said that, as he stepped off it, his aura remained. The empty pedestal stands in a gallery, a monument to the iconographer turned icon. This is archly self-conscious but other works trigger our imaginations. Gianni Motti’s invisible ink works are just a row of empty frames yet we know drawings lie in the weave of the paper. Yoko Ono’s early-Sixties Instruction Paintings are typed commands which conjure images in our minds. Song Dong writes a diary in water on stone, his thoughts eventually disappearing as the water dries.

I loved Lai Chih-Sheng’s work, in which he meticulously draws in pencil around every architectural detail of one of the Hayward’s biggest spaces — around floor tiles, on the edges of pillars and doorways. It is barely perceptible, yet we stand amid an epic drawing.

This is not a show for the cynic but I think it places great faith in its audience, lending us an active role in forming the art. By giving us little to see, it actually makes us look harder.

Invisible: Art about the Unseen runs until August 5 (0844 847 9910, southbankcentre.co.uk).

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