| 19 August 2009
Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden
6 August- 11 October
Contemporary art demands an open mind especially when approaching a sculptor who admits to drawing inspiration from, ‘my imagination, my interests in psychology, metaphysics (when I was seven I saw my grandmother’s ghost and at seventeen I time travelled), cosmology and UFOs.'
Hmmm. In most instances nodding and smiling politely whilst backing slowly towards the nearest exit would be my own recommended course of action. Signs at the front desk are less than promising; a young man with a look of bewildered desperation implores a gallery attendant, ‘Man what is this stuff?’ and an older woman exiting with husband in tow has a more concrete opinion; ‘It’s just silliness.’
Well we like our creative people a bit off the wall and John McCracken is off the wall, through the door, and out with the fairies. A video interview in the basement does little to correct this preconception- he comes across as being slightly distracted and totally barmy in a good-natured sort of way.
It is to the complete credit of the sculptures themselves that this exhibition is utterly mesmerising and hauntingly beautiful. The first room grabs you instantly; there it is; the monolith from 2001 Space Odyssey. Well three of them actually. Powers of self-possession (and the presence of a gallery attendant) just about restrained me from doing a prehistoric ape impression. These are striking structures, repeated in variety throughout the ground floor, evocative of an immense and utterly intangible power. They are pillars of non-reality, weightless megaliths humming with an ancient and at times sinister mysticism.
Their relation to their surroundings is fascinating. These massive but somehow immaterial forms seem at times to sit intrusively within a space. Here the otherness of McCracken’s vision is borne out: ‘‘I see sculpture in a mental space… Timeless pieces, timeless works. Dream-time, faraway places, faraway times.” These forms offend expectations of continuing space; they are at once an affront, a manipulation and an extension of the exhibition space they inhabit. Highly-polished and mirrored surfaces further emphasise notions of immaterial form and extended space; McCracken’s transcendental totems glitter in the reflections of the Botanic’s flora.
This is sculpture beyond the easy categorisation of Minimalism and the exhibition itself resonates with an otherworldliness both comforting and at times sinister. This is powerful art which because it doesn’t wear its meaning on its sleeve, is both fulfilling and inspiring for those willing to approach McCracken’s ideas with an open mind.
John McCracken
Inverleith House, 2009
From left to right: Luster, 2006; Stardust, 2006; Ring, 2006.
Private collection, courtesy David Zwirner, New York
Photograph: Ruth Clark
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