I make an effort to wander through the Tate Modern as often as I can, which means two or three times a year.
I am particularly fond of going on Sunday mornings, before it gets crowded. There is usually something interesting to gaze at and the installations in the Turbine Room are great for young children, well, my children anyway....
If one tires of the art on offer there, one can also walk over the nearby Millennium Bridge and be reminded of Wren's genius in the form of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral.
However, on a weekday morning last December, I took two visiting Plastic People for a wander into Miroslaw Balka's "How It Is"
One of the many entertaining things about viewing 'public' art is the accompanying blurb...and I quote, "We associate the absence of light both with sleep and more sinister connotations.
The dark, by limiting visual clues that we usually rely on in order to make sense of the world, leaves us open to all possibilities, from the fantastic to the terrifying. How It Is invites us to embrace these potential experiences by plunging into darkness in the company of other visitors. Strangers and friends, emptiness and obstacles, time and space blur into new categories."
One could use that description as one way of viewing darkness, 'emptiness and obstacle blur' and so on.....but really, if one doesn't know what darkness is physically and emotionally, then one isn't human.....but I digress...
Alternatively, one could look at the whole thing as a big box with some dumbed-down PR attached to it. My view would be along the lines of something Vráťa said as we exited the dark box, "It's only darkness".
There's a difference between genius and darkness.
I'm not sure Balka's installation fulfilled any 'public' function other than reminding me I'm a human being who enjoys art for art's sake but only when it alters something chemical, electric or whatever within the brain. Unfortunately, Balka didn't.
