When Forms Come Alive at HAYWARD GALLERY

February 23, 2024 Razvan Chiorean

This showcase explores how modern sculptures capture motion, change, and form evolution. When Forms Come Alive features sculptures that express movement, fluidity and growth.

In this exhibition, 21 artists find inspiration in the irregular shapes seen in nature. Instead of making sculptures that feel solid and permanent, they create art that seems to be always changing and transforming. Imagine sculptures that look like they are oozing, moving, or growing – like they are full of life! These artworks have textures that you can almost feel, and they invite you to look at them in a way that feels like touching. This is a refreshing change in a world where many things happen on screens and don't feel real. The artists want us to actively explore the shapes and forms around us. They see their work as a team effort with different materials, reminding us that everything in the world is always in motion and changing.

Drawing inspiration from a dancer's movement, the crash of a wave, the fluidity of molten metal, and the intricate weave of a spider's web, the pieces featured in When Forms Comes Alive evoke dynamic and ever-changing spheres of experience. With undulations, droops, eruptions, cascades, and unabashedly abundant growth, these sculptures beckon a hands-on observation, inciting tangible reactions. In a time dominated by digitization and disembodiment in our interactions, these artworks evoke the joys of movement and gesture, the lyrical essence of gravity, and the pure encounter with sensation.