An empty room in an art gallery or museum. Where is the art work? You search around and eventually find it, a tiny piece hanging from the ceiling, or an abstract painting camouflaged as the same colour as the white wall. Yes, we’ve all been there.
But this major exhibition goes one step further. It is composed of nine completely empty rooms. Visitors may for a moment be forgiven for thinking that exit signs and thermostats are sculptures. However, they are just the fittings, for in fact there are no art works on display. Only ‘nothingness’. “Voids, a retrospective” (running until March 23) is intended to introduce visitors to the history of exhibiting emptiness, taking in Yves Klein, the collective group Art & Language, and Laurie Parsons.
Purity or provocative? Revolutionary or just plain ridiculous? Would there be a place for this kind of show at one of Tokyo’s many white cube galleries, let alone a major museum? I leave it to readers to assess.
For more, see the museum’s website.
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