Taking refuge from the cold wet weather, Californian artist John Baldessari’s Penguin has hopped from the open spaces of Regent’s Park where it greeted visitors to the Frieze Sculpture Park to the more enclosed courtyard of the Marian Goodman Gallery in Soho, where it announces more of his work upstairs: ‘Brain/Cloud (Two Views)’ along with two huge injet prints ‘Palm Tree’ and ‘Seascape’, bringing the blue of the warm Californian sea and skies to a grey dark London.
Is the large white shape a brain, or a cloud or both? There is ambiguity in the two views facing each other, one a bold three dimensional form on the wall which takes the shape of a huge brain; the other a subtle and delicate image projected on the opposite wall, which is more of a soft whispy cloud, in which viewers of the brain appear fifteen seconds after they have been viewing it, unintentionally joining the brain and the cloud together.
Linking back to the work of RenĂ© Magritte, Baldessari’s installation at the gallery continues the exploration of his ideas for disembodied physical elements morphing into different abstract forms, with the viewer as a connecting medium.