- Venue
- Barbican Arts Centre
- Location
- London
I would strongly recommend visiting The Curve, one of the exhibition spaces at Barbican Art Centre. If it is your first time at The Curve, you will be nicely stroked. The black cloths on the left and the concrete floor recall an interesting fusion between a bent road and an unusual parterre of a theatre. I could not help but push the drapes away to see what was behind them. Well, just a wall unfortunately. I would suggest visiting the gallery in the morning when there are no many people except an understandable bored gallery assistant. A Tuesday morning I started my very intimate journey, walking along that pathway, almost in the shadow and surrounded by the sound of the birds and the wind come from the speakers. I closed my eyes for a second to try to get the most out of my “Zen experience”. You are warmly invited to enjoy the relaxed atmosphere created by a Japanese garden projected in a series of panels on the right. I have imagined that natural scenario likely in the middle of a busy New York City, where Peter Coffin works and lives. Showing continuous shifts in perspective and scale, typical of the Japanese garden design philosophy,, he has created a false sense of the space that makes you feel quite dizzy.
Under the spotlights, a series of small sculptures grouped in two and placed upon white plinths follows a curved array. Again the artist’s purpose is playing with our conventions of experiencing the reality, altering our perceptions. It is worth to find out how many common objects might look like outstanding when they have been digitally manipulated according to different perspectives…the series of the Coffin’s sculptures would have been never-ending! Observing the Coffin’s artworks made of a sort of rock salt that sweated under the warmth of the lights, one might wonder what kind of concept links the sculptures with the video footage. Being aware that there is not a clear explanation on the exhibition brochure, this project may present a combination of the Eastern world grabbed by the Japanese culture and the Western world composed by some organic and man-made objects. A Coffin’s abstract sculpture smells an obvious reference to the Western sculptor Jean Arp but my preference goes by all means to a mirror image of a carved piece of wood placed in the middle of the curved gallery, where the speakers sound louder not by accident. It has captured my attention because it is the only one not being completely distorted by the artist’s modus operandi and because it seems the only link between the sculptures and the natural landscape presented on the screens.