John Baldessari – Pure Beauty
After meeting in Clerkenwell walked to the Tate for John Baldessari’s ‘Pure Beauty’ show. Genuinely inventive in his analysing how we interpret and impose meaning on images. You can see Baldessari’s influence on designers, artists and photographers like Tibor Kalman, Stefan Sagmeister and Cindy Sherman. Good sense of humor too. Bought a set of Baldessari fridge magnets for the kids – a sheet of words which you combine to create meanings.
Miroslaw Balka – How It Is
Also experienced Miroslaw Balka’s How It Is in the Turbine Hall. Walk up a wide ramp into a massive steel container/hanger, which gets darker and darker the further you venture inside… rather, it would if it wasn’t full of giggling school girls fucking about with their mobile phones. Very strange sensation – you know that you are stood in a huge space (maybe 30 ft wide, 40 ft high and 100ft deep) but the darkness means you can’t see your hand in front of your face, voices and clanging footsteps echo inside the hollow metal structure and it feels claustrophobic.
Then walked back up to Angel (past Barts and Smithfield meat market) for a few drinks with Jeff from Research Studios. Last train home.
