How It Is - Tate Modern, 27 November 2009

How it is by Miroslaw Balka is the latest controversial exhibit from the Unilever seried at Tate Modern.

‘Like its predecessors, it it innovative, bold and challenging‘, says Tate Modern.

You’re invited to walk into a huge container, where you are supposedly engulfed by darkness. A fun thing to do? A way of confronting your fears (do you want to walk into the unknow)? A disappointment?

The container is 1000 x 1300 x 3000. Walking into it for the first time is disconcerting. You can’t quite see. Figures are coming towards you. You don’t know when you’re going to reach the end. Are you in danger of hurting yourself or others?

Once you’ve reached the end, you realise that in fact it’s not totally dark. The best thing however is watching people entering the container, dark forms against the light.

I came out and left it a few minutes before going in again. Shouldn’t have done that. You can quite repeat the first experience. It’s not as dark the second time round and you are aware of where the end is.

Still… it’s fun and a bit disorientating at first.

How it is by Miroslaw Balka is on at Tate Modern until 5 April 2010. FREE.

This entry was posted on 29/11/2009 at 09:47 am and is filed under London, Exhibition. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.