Serpentine Gallery

Celebrated French artist Bertrand Lavier, renowned for his inspirational sculptures made from assembled and modified found objects, has been commissioned by the Serpentine to create a fountain within the grounds of the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

Following Rock On Top of Another Rock by Fischli/Weiss the fountain is part of the Serpentine’s ongoing outdoor commissions in Kensington Gardens and will be in situ for one year.

Bertrand Lavier’s Fountain is a playful interpretation of this most traditional of garden features; instead of a classical sculpture of a figure or natural form, the jets of water emanate from an apparently unruly mass of garden hoses.

Suitable for

• Family friendly

Where

Serpentine Sackler Gallery
W Carriage Dr, London W2

Website

http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/bertrand-lavier-fountain-2014

The first major exhibition in the UK by Argentinian-born artist Julio Le Parc (1928, lives in France), who is known for creating artworks that dynamically animate and transform space through light. Featuring seminal installations and interactive works from the early 1960s to the present day, Le Parc’s playful and mesmerising exhibition transforms the Gallery and actively involves visitors.

Le Parc began to make geometrical abstract paintings in 1959 based on pre-determined systems, first in black and white, then in colour. In the early 1960s he began working in three dimensions, incorporating moving, projected and reflected lights. From 1964 onwards he began producing works based on distorting mirrors and the displacement of the spectator by means of labyrinths and play rooms.

Where

Serpentine Sackler Gallery
W Carriage Dr, London W2

Website

http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/julio-le-parc

This is the first major survey in the UK of German sculptor and conceptual artist Reiner Ruthenbeck (born 1937, Germany).

Ruthenbeck is an orchestrator of geometric form, noted for his ability to transform space using unconventional materials such as crumpled paper or swathes of fabric. Ruthenbeck’s work subverts the familiar, using minimalist objects and simple everyday materials to explore architecture, iconology, perception, and in later works, sound.

In 2006, Ruthenbeck wrote, ‘we are moving towards immaterial art, yet we only approach it in small steps’. From 1968 to 1972 he created several piles and cones made of ash, slag, and paper. Later, he would present utilitarian objects like chairs, tables and a suitcase, stripped of their function and thus exaggerating the objects’ pure shapes.

The exhibition will bring together, for the first time in the UK, many of these key moments in the artist’s career and will include sculpture, objects and conceptual works.

Website

http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/reiner-ruthenbeck