03/09/13

Doris Salcedo, White Cube, London | Culture | The Guardian

Art

Doris Salcedo
White Cube, London
4/5
Adrian Searle The Guardian, Wednesday 1 5 Septem ber 2 004 1 4 .05 BST

Suppressed v iolence: Doris Salcedo, White Cube, London Photo: Stephen White

There is something wrong with the gallery. It should be wider and longer; the light should be brighter. Otherwise, it is all but empty. Paradoxically, Neither, by Columbian artist Doris Salcedo, has been a massive undertaking. Embedded in the walls is a diamond-pattern grid, from floor to ceiling, right around the gallery, a heavy-duty metal mesh driven flush into the surface of the plaster. The walls press in, the references multiply. This mesh, whose primary use is to strengthen concrete floors, has latterly found a more ignoble use: the cages at Guantnamo Bay. In a couple of places - high on the wall close by a far corner, and from floor to waist height on the opposite wall - the mesh is pulled free. There's more mesh behind. The grille also protrudes over the entrance, as though the mesh, the walls and the space itself have failed to reach an accord. The walls are false, walls built within walls, one side of the mesh sharpened and pushed into the plasterboard with an industrial hydraulic press. The business of making this work has been rigorously mundane, and the atmosphere of suppressed violence is palpable.
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Doris Salcedo, White Cube, London | Culture | The Guardian

It was also a formal act. Salcedo has said that she wanted the work to be an image of emptiness. How many varieties of emptiness are there? How is it that one can say that this work achieves its sense of exactness and precision? In the contest between walls and mesh, the work and the gallery, something happens. The effect is not decorative and there is no entertainment to be had here. This is a serious and complex art work. What can one say of this room? It is at once holding its breath and having all the air crushed out of it. Even the light feels constricted. I can do little more than tell you how it feels this empty room that refuses to offer more than a condition, a place to stand and be silent. Until October 18. Details: 020-7930 5373

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