Universal Gym 2009

This is Thomas Hirschhorn’s ‘Universal Gym’, and I love the ambition of this piece. Look at this enormous, dark sphere. It appears to be made from dark tape or shiny black plastic, and it’s looming, almost threatening. Up close, I can see the individual pieces that make up the whole thing; the way the light catches on the surface and creates highlights gives it an almost organic feel. The tape or plastic has a material presence; it's both there and not there, and in that sense, this physical presence is not unlike a painting. There’s a raw, visceral quality to the object, something that seems precarious and on the verge of collapsing. In this respect, I think of artists like Kurt Schwitters, who was working with found materials and a similar sense of improvisation, though Hirschhorn takes this to a monumental scale. It reminds us that art is never finished, it’s always in process, always in conversation.