"Lygia Clark’s Architecture of Feeling" by Louisa Elderton

There is an all-encompassing satisfaction when an exhibition demonstrates alignment between the artworks on display and the architecture that frames them. Such is the case with Lygia Clark’s retrospective at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie. Established within the late-1950s Brazilian neo-concrete movement, which prioritized embodied and sensory experience, Clark’s practice was concerned with the subjective relationship between artwork and space, artist and viewer. Here, the synergy with the museum building, designed by Mies van der Rohe and defined by its flexible interior space, makes for a presentation that encourages movement, exploration and playful release.

A concurrent aural experience resonates throughout this show. There is the gentle tap, tap, tap of Clark’s 1960s ‘Bichos’ (Critters) series, comprising sculptures with hinged aluminium plates that viewers are invited to fold and reshape; the laughter of people experimenting with the masks, bodysuits, glasses and rubber tubing of the ‘Objetos sensoriais’ (Sensorial Objects, 1966–67), which can be handled and worn to engage unique bodily perceptions; and the gentle puff and rat-a-tat-tat of her ‘Objetos relacionais’ (Relational Objects, late 1970s–1980s), made of stones, shells, tights and other items, which Clark incorporated into psychotherapeutic sessions.

What is perhaps most intuitive about this exhibition is how it spatially mirrors the radical development of Clark’s oeuvre – small areas are delineated with curtains and then expand into open-plan fluidity. It begins with paintings from the 1950s: after initially rendering figurative scenes, Clark developed a cubist style upon moving to Paris, where she studied with Fernand Léger. Paintings such as Escada (Staircase, 1951), where the spiralling form is divided into facets of primary colour, demonstrate her early interest in visualizing constructions of space via this architectural motif.

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