Miroslaw Balka: DIE TRAUMDEUTUNG 25,31m AMSL, White Cube

Returning to London with concurrent exhibitions at White Cube and the Freud Museum, Miroslaw Balka is best known to British audiences for his 2009 commission in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Approaching that commission, Balka clearly understood that the most successful Turbine Hall installations have always been those that rely on a single very simple but dramatic intervention. 

The architecture of White Cube's gallery in Mason's Yard overtly echoes the appearance of the electricity substation that once stood in its place. As such, it resembles a much scaled-down version of Tate Modern’s former-power-station location.

This is Balka’s first exhibition in London since the Turbine Hall. In White Cube's Mason's Yard gallery he once again demonstrates how the most minimal intervention can be employed to spectacularly transform a large barren space. In the windowless gloaming of the gallery's downstairs room, a site-specific installation made from wire mesh is suspended 2.1 metres from the floor. The result is somehow both claustrophobic and vertiginous at once.

More understated, and certainly more beautiful, are the two very simple polished concrete sculptures in the gallery's main room. Though apparently simple, these sculptures are rich in symbolism. One, apparently in the form of a truncated trapezohedron, is inspired by Albrecht Durer's allegorical engraving Melancholia 1, while also referencing Tarnhelm; the magic helmet that appears in Wagner's Rheingold. This sculpture has a doppelganger that can be seen in Balka’s concurrent exhibition in the Freud Museum.

The exhibition’s name; Die Traumdeutung, is a direct Freudian reference, being the original title of Sigmund Freud's seminal work The Interpretation of Dreams. There is certainly something dreamlike about the simplicity and atmosphere of the exhibition, and something uncanny about seeing it repeated in two venues.

Die Traumdeutung closes at White Cube Mason’s Yard on May 31st, so be sure to catch it while you can.