Polish artist Miroslaw Balka has been unveiled as the tenth artist commissioned in The Unilever Series for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern. The work, called How It Is, is a humongous steel chamber resembling a 13m-high and 30m-long shipping container, raised on 2m-high steel legs in the middle of the gallery. From pictures, the interior appears as a black, open void, facing the end wall of the Turbine Hall and swallowing the light. Gallery staff are expecting to fit around 60 visitors at a time into the looming darkness, where they will struggle even to see the people next to them. Who knows, who or what you will bump into!
Balka's work is influenced by his Catholic upbringing as well as the fractured history of his native country. In recent years, he has focused on the Holocaust as a permanent scar on the collective memory. He refers it to 'A box in which we can place our miseries' . This all my look and sound rather dark, but I can't wait to see it, 'm sure it's going to look and feel pretty intense!
How It Is opens to the public from tomorrow until April 5th 2010.
