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13/10/2008

Cildo Meireles / Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Tate Modern, London

Cildo Meireles is one of the leaders in the international development of Conceptual art, and this Brazilian artist has made some of the most politically telling, aesthetically seductive and philosophically intriguing works in recent art.

His objects and atmospheric installations from the late 1960s onwards never fail to surprise, ranging in scale from a tiny work in the form of a finger-ring to a vast installation covering 225m². Composed of familiar everyday objects, yet accumulated in forms that we never imagined before, such as the all-red living room of Red Shift 1967–84, or the massive tower of radios of Babel 2001, Meireles's works lead us from an initial feeling of amazement to a deeper level of engagement. Eight of these great installations are on display here simultaneously for the first time, including the labyrinthine Through 1983–9, and Volatile 1980–94, a multi-sensory environment that plays with our response to danger, real or imagined

The exhibition also includes his celebrated Insertions into Ideological Circuits 1970, by which he devised a method to disseminate messages of protest under the military dictatorship in Brazil. This is Meireles's first major retrospective in the UK and it presents a powerful and intriguing tour of his most memorable works.

Eureka/Blindhotland 1970-5
Cildo Meireles Eureka/Blindhotland 1970-5

Eureka/Blindhotland is an installation in a darkened room. In the centre, a spotlight falls dramatically on a large set of scales, raised on a pole. The scales sit in equilibrium, holding in one dish a pair of identical rectangular wooden blocks standing upright in parallel so that they resemble an ‘=’ symbol turned on its end; in the other dish, a pair of the same blocks form an ‘x’ or multiplication symbol. On the floor below, two hundred black rubber balls of the same size are scattered randomly within the confines of a tall net enclosure which defines a square around the central pole. The balls lie on a section of rubber matting the same colour as the pole supporting the scales. Although the balls are identical in appearance, they range in weight between 150 and 1,500 grammes. These physical components form the second part of the work; Eureka referring to the scales and wooden bars, and Blindhotland to the rubber balls. An alternative method of display is to stand the wooden blocks on the floor and balance the accumulated weights of three rubber balls with that of a fourth in the scales. The project’s third component, titled Expeso, is a sound recording that plays in the space. It is a tape-recorded documentation of one hundred balls being dropped from heights in combinations of fixed and variable components: the weights of the balls, the heights from which they are dropped and the distance they are dropped from the microphone. The first part of the project is external to the displayed installation. It involves inserting two basic elements – black and white photographs of a homeless man and of a ball – in between four and eight newspapers on one day during the period of the work’s exhibition. There are eight variations on the way in which the two photographs, in two sizes, may be exhibited, combining size and order. These are described as XY, Xy, xY, xy, YX, yX, Yx, yx.

In a text written for the first exhibition of the work at the Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, in 1975, the artist explained:

This project is the natural development of an experiment which constitutes, in my view, the basic nucleus of my work. It is an investigation of space in all of its aspects: physical, geometric, historical, psychological, topological and anthropological ... [with] the aim of creating a continuum of perceptual information ... Blindhotland ... is the generic name given to a series of works begun in 1970, in which the dominance of the visual gives way to a ‘blind’ perception of reality through the senses of hearing, smell and taste; through awareness of density, heat, and so on.
(Quoted in Cameron, p.118.)

Eureka/Blindhotland evolved from an initial work, Eureka 1970, that consists simply of a cross made of two wooden bars. Meireles derived the idea for Eureka from Archimedes’ formula for density: density is equal to mass divided by volume (d=m/v). For him, this work demonstrates the possibility of creating a balance between two completely different elements; density becomes a significant physical presence with its own identity. In another work related to the project, Blindhotland/Gueto (Blindhotland/Ghetto, exhibited at Galerie Luiz Buarque de Hollanda e Paulo Bittencourt, Rio de Janeiro in 1975), viewers were invited to handle eight leather balls in two sizes, four large and four small, containing sand, burlap, air or helium in an area resembling a playing field surrounded by net. As there was no direct relationship between the size and weight of the balls, viewers’ expectations and perceptions of mass and volume were disrupted by interaction with the work.

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14 October 2008 - 13 April 2009

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
The Unilever Series

Tate is delighted to announce that Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is the next artist invited to create the Unilever Series commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2008.

Born in Strasbourg, France in 1965, Gonzalez-Foerster now lives and works in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. This will be the artist’s first public commission in the UK and it will be unveiled on Monday 13 October 2008.

This annual commission invites an artist to make a work of art especially for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. The Series has resulted in some of the most innovative and significant sculptures of recent years.

About the Unilever Series: turbinegeneration project
Students from different cultures share thoughts and ideas inspired by works in The Unilever Series.
The Inspiration

Every year Tate commissions an artist to create an installation for the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern in London as part of The Unilever Series. In 2008-9 The Unilever Series artist is Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster. She works with a range of media including light, sound, photography, film and everyday objects to create evocative and atmospheric artworks.

The Theme

In response to the ideas behind Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster's work, turbinegeneration's theme this year is 'Spaces and Places'.

Gonzalez-Foerster's work addresses the modern world in which we live and how we relate to places, people and memories. Her work invites the viewer to become an active participant in the theatre of modern day life and encourages us to interact within her environments in order to experience new possibilities.

Moving from sculpture to film to installation, she creates environmental places that enhance our sense of place through architectural form, light and colour. This attack of the senses, or synesthesia, allows the viewer to immerse themselves through their senses for a short while within this small and yet often familiar world, a micro-utopia.

Gonzalez-Foerster uses architectural motifs, interior design, everyday objects, videos, light effects and sounds from specific places, and moulds these environmental influences through her installations. Her work will be the inspiration that will allow our partners to explore digital media in many ways but it will also allow the creation of new environments in which to present collaborative work. It opens a door for us to experience other spaces and other places.
The Unilever International Schools Art Project (UISAP)

The Unilever International Schools Art Project is a parallel initiative that also encourages young people to create art inspired by the themes of each artist in The Unilever Series: turbinegeneration differs from this project as it has been developed to encourage collaborative responses rather than individual interpretations. You can download the current Unilever International Schools Art Project pack here.

Please also note that to participate in the Unilever International Schools Art Project, the country in which you live must have already signed up to the project via the local Unilever office. With turbinegeneration any school in any country may take part in steps one and two.


Image: Eureka / Blindhotland 1970–5. Tate © Cildo Meireles

Tate Modern
Bankside London
Exhibition Hours
Sunday to Thursday, 10.00–18.00. Friday and Saturday, 10.00–22.00. Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15).
Admission to The Unilever Series is free.

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