Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London
Not only does this giant plastic bag make the intangible physical, it gains a bodily sense of weight and an unexpected emotional resonance
When he wasn’t busy wrapping buildings and bridges in vast reams of fabric, Christo was wrapping absolutely nothing. The Bulgarian artist made his name – alongside his partner Jeanne-Claude – with a wrapped Reichstag, a swaddled Arc de Triomphe and an enveloped Pont Neuf. They found a way of containing, embracing, protecting and smothering the whole world. But in the 1960s, he was trying to wrap air. Nothing more.
Christo (Jeanne-Claude hadn’t been given full joint credit at this point) wanted to contain the air within a room, but the original idea was limited by technical constraints. Now, 50 years after it was first proposed for the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, and six years after Christo’s death in 2020, he’s finally pulled it off. The opening room at Gagosian has been bisected horizontally, a huge polyethylene sack splitting the room in two, held to the ceiling by white ropes. It droops low, sinking into the middle of the space, forcing you to crouch to get under it. You’re forced into a physical relationship with the work, bullied into changing how you interact with the environment.
Christo: Air is at Gagosian, Grosvenor Hill, London, until 21 August
