Exhibit: Half the Air in a Given Space

I made my first visit to the Henry Art Gallery this week because I heard about the "balloon exhibit" that would be ending during my mom's visit; therefore, we thought a walk over to the University District to play with some balloons would be a fun afternoon. Once at the Henry, the first sight of the exhibit was an overview of the room with the 37,000 balloons. It was definitely tempting to not jump over the edge into the pool of balloons, but others must have had the same idea as me, because there was a warning sign at the overview, "CAUTION: this is a 14 foot drop. Do not jump into the balloons. It was cause injury and possibly death."

My mom and I spent about 30 minutes playing with balloons and the extra bonus of copious amount of static electricity. The balloons were definitely larger and heavier than anticipated. Only 20 people are allowed in the exhibit at a time and while you are maneuvering through the exhibit, you could hear the pop of an innocent balloon's life ending in the name of art.

Below is the information advertising the exhibit and about the artist Martin Creed.

Martin Creed Work No.360: Half the Air in a Given Space
The form of Work No. 360 is never fixed; its only containers are the walls of the building where it is exhibited and where the artwork is in a permanent state of flux. The exact number of balloons for each installation is determined by performing a mathematical calculation where the volume of the gallery is halved and then divided by the equivalent volume of a sixteen-inch balloon in cubic feet. In this installation at the Henry, over 37,000 silver balloons occupy--as stated in the title--half of the available space in the gallery.

The monochromatic and formless sea of spheres that is achieved by sheer accumulation offers visitors not only the wondrous sight of an uncanny landscape but also an opportunity to navigate the work from within in a place where touching the art is normally not possible. The shifts that occur with visitor traffic and the ephemeral nature of balloons, that either spontaneously pop or deflate with time, are constantly affecting and transforming it. Following the artist's instructions, during the run of the exhibition the gallery will be replenished multiple times with balloons to ensure that the piece maintains its integrity.

The silver balloons appear to be a knowing wink to Andy Warhol's Silver Clouds, an artwork that made its debut at the now legendary Leo Castelli Gallery in New York in 1966. The "clouds," which were a first and resembled the now ubiquitous metallic floating balloons that you find in party stores, were made in collaboration with Billy Kluver, an engineer at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey who had an interest in the intersection of art and science. Scotchpak, a metalized plastic film invented by 3M without a defined application, was used to fabricate the casings, which were then filled with helium and heat-sealed. The sight and experience of pillow-like structures floating in the gallery on air currents created an environment that seemed to reference outer space in the very year that the United States first launched the Saturn IB rocket, a crucial step in the Cold War era race to conquer space.

Creed, like many other artists of his generation, establishes an indirect dialogue with the historical piece by creating a series of reversals and conflations that revisit and expand on the original ideas. In Work No. 360 the pearly latex balloons--the kind that are used for weddings and important anniversaries are strangely familiar, and in the tens of thousands create a sculptural form that is otherworldly, sensuous, and monumental.

The simple multiplication of identical spherical units without any additional artifice configures an environment and an experience that has been likened by critics o deep-sea diving and to floating in an antigravity chamber.  It is undeniable that there is wonder in Creed's work but more importantly, there is honesty and humor, manifested and very restricted and, at least in appearance, simple means. Creed's work constantly and systematically challenges definitions of art through what seem like mundane gestures. In reality, those gestures are very complex and are designed with precision to stretch the boundaries of museum work and to taunt audiences with stark, yet playful and seductive, questions about where contemporary art is today.