“Extremities (smooth, smooth),” Pipilotti Rist’s contribution to “Walking in My Mind,” the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

Currently showing at the Hayward Gallery are the minds of ten artists — or, at least, how the artists feel they can represent the melding of product and creative process.  Ten installation artists from around the world are featured in the show.  Some are relative newcomers who are showing new pieces at the Hayward, like Swedish Bo Christian Larsson and Japanese Chiharu Shiota, who exhibit for the first time in London, and Dutch artist Mark Manders, who shows for the first time in a major British exhibition. Others are more well-established, including Yayoi Kusama and Turner prize-winner Keith Tyson, as well as the late controversial American artist Jason Rhoades.  Also exhibiting are Charles Avery (UK), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), and Pipilotti Rist (Switzerland).

Related links:
Hayward Gallery: Walking in My Mind
Art Review: Walking in My Mind Hayward Gallery, London SE1 [The Observer]
Thoughts go astray at the Hayward Gallery’s Walking in My Mind show [The Guardian]
Dark delights from the lonely mind of Japanese genius Yoshitomo Nara [The Independent]

Yoshitomo Nara in “Walking in My Mind.” Via The Guardian.

more pictures and story after the jump…

The exhibition aims to recreate the minds of these ten artists.  Accordingly, the Hayward shows “mindscapes,” spatial representations of the creative process into which the audience is, physically, invited.  Five of the ten pieces have been constructed specifically for the show, so that the resulting works have been consciously built to reflect the intent of the project.  Showing are new drawings and sculptures from Charles Avery’s ongoing series “The Islanders.”  Keith Tyson’s “Studio Wall Drawings” are mounted on the walls of a metal and cardboard composite brain.  Present is a young boy with his nose “pressed to/the glass,” but instead of William Carlos Williams’ confines, the young Tyson comes up against “the boulder made of language… the pressure to understand.”  He tells the Guardian that “Studio Wall Drawings” became “a reflection of how the mind can be constituted from various little parts, little objects of language.”  Similarly, Yoshitomo Nara’s cartoons on view at the Hayward are of young children, and the artist’s youth: a mind built of memories.

Charles Avery’s “Eternity Chamber,” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

Above and below, Yoshitomo Nara in “Walking in My Mind.” Via The Independent.

From Keith Tyson’s contribution to “Walking in My Mind” at the Hayward Gallery. Still via The Guardian.

Above and below, further detail from Keith Tyson’s “Studio Wall Drawings,” at the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

Stephanie Rosenthal, chief curator of the Hayward Gallery and co-curator of the show, explains, “The works in ‘Walking in My Mind’… pull the viewer into the unique worlds of ten major international artists who are explicitly preoccupied with their own minds and the creative process.”  That is, “Walking in My Mind” unifies process and product, as the show seeks to make the latter the former.  The piece by Jason Rhoades, who passed away in 2006, is titled “The Creation Myth,” and Mark Manders shows six new pieces from a series called “Self-portrait as a Building;” meanwhile, Japanese artist Yayoi Kuyama presents a cavernous, spotted landscape, in keeping with the spots which pepper her work, which point in turn to her struggle with schizophrenia.

Jason Rhoades’s “The Creation Myth,” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

Above and below, Mark Manders, “Self-portrait as a Building,” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

Further details from Mark Manders in “Walking in My Mind,” via The Guardian.

From Mark Manders’s “Self-portrait as a Building,” at the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

Bo Christian Larsson’s “The first cut is the deepest and and the division of seven” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

Above and below, Yayoi Kusama, “Dots Obsession,” part of “Walking in My Mind” at the Hayward Gallery. via The Guardian.

External view of Yayoi Kusama’s “Dots Obsession,” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

Above and below, Thomas Hirschhorn, “Cavemanman,” in “Walking in My Mind.” via The Guardian.

– R. Fogel

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 7:50 am and is filed under Go See. 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.