FOUR WALLS & FRAMES - an ode to art
tate modern, london.
museum voorlinden, netherlands.
The quiet hum and dainty footsteps that echo in the rooms of galleries and exhibits provide a unique sense of comfort for those who frequent these places often. The sense of complete tranquillity as your mind and body prepares itself for a journey of looping around vast never ending rooms, takes over. It is finding yourself completely immersed in the mosaic nature, of the floor-plan that becomes an exhibit itself, forcing one to become separated from the chaos of the outside. The four walls of each room house you for some time and ask you to fully embrace what the bareness of the white provides amongst the intricacy of what is within the coveted and protected frames. By entering the gallery and observing the exhibits you step into one of these frames, it is all encompassing as you tread carefully admiring it all.
Whilst on this lulled journey of escapism, the visual arts simultaneously play an important role in addressing society directly, using art as a medium to reflect, attack and critique. The art forms laying on a canvas, spread out, act as a distinctive tableau to disillusion you and dismantle popular discourse, whether it concerns topics such race, feminism or even the rise of the digital age. The four walls serve as a conductor for thought and as you step in, the multitudes of artistic voices amplify and layer onto each other, each exhibition calling for attention and it is overwhelmingly beautiful. The voices reflect off of the frames and glass and leap through, bounding across the hollow space searching to be understood.
british museum, london.
british museum, london.
However, it is just as significant that exhibitions and the visual arts do not exist purely to be intellectually understood or interacted with. Sometimes the beauty of these spaces is to walk through mindlessly appreciating it for the colours or the unique way the textures form together on the canvas, or how light is projected reflecting onto your fingers and filling the space like a kaleidoscope. The assault on the senses can be enough to find pleasure in the visual arts, to freely enjoy the visual aspect without wanting to know about its place in art history is just as good enough.
