The Surreal House

The most delightfully crass piece was contemporary artist’s Noble and Webster’s ‘Metal fucking rats’ (2006), in the Panic Space room

I am more than partial to the tantalising fantasies of Salvador Dali and the baffling explanations of Freud so I took myself along to the Barbican’s Surreal House exhibition to savour the delights they had brought together.

The pieces were located in various ‘rooms’ of the house and you explore, stopping to examine various installations, paintings and film footage, constantly feeling excited and on edge. I was studying a remarkable sketch by Dali of a obscure face, propped up by poles and prodding a female breast, whose head looked not dissimilar from a light fixture, when a loud crash of distorted piano notes echoed from deeper inside and tore me away to investigate. A baby grand piano hangs upside, suspended from the ceiling and the keys horribly bent and stretched, emitting off key twangs before returning to its un-tampered form until another two minutes had passed and so it repeats itself. This was Rebecca horn’ Concert for anarchy,(1990).

It was beautifully curated in the way you were swept unexpectedly on to the next room by a flicker of light from a film, or a glimpse of a half finished staircase ahead. It felt rather like that nervous, enchanted tickle of apprehension you get at the start of a rollercoaster ride or at a poignant moment in a horror film. It made itself particularly known in the small dark space showing Jan Svankmajers’ ‘Down to the cellar’ (1982), where a small blue eyed girl explores an underground cellar. There is coal everywhere, one man scrapes it over himself to mimic a duvet, a woman breaks eggs and mixes the sooty concoction in to black cakes, and the little girl watches, entranced. This nightmarish quality where you can’t quite tear your eyes away encompassed the entire exhibit and brought some remarkable pieces to light – a must see this season! It certainly got me thinking about dreams and their distortions and rationalising of the obscure in the subconscious.

C.Pettman

The Surreal House, Barbican art gallery 10^th June- 12^th September 2010