Looking back at ‘sixty years of restless sculpture’, When Forms Come Alive at Hayward Gallery, London, opens with a dance of floating lights illuminating the gallery. The performative sculpture dubbed Shylight by DRIFT features flower-like lights furling and unfurling, ascending and descending fluidly which is a befitting outset for a show speaking of movement and dynamism of form. From there on in, the gallery space becomes an exploration of sculptures inspired by movement, flux and organic growth.

When Forms Come Alive brings together a range of works by 21 international artists including Ruth Asawa, Lynda Benglis, Paloma Bosquê, Olaf Brzeski, Tara Donovan, DRIFT, EJ Hill, Marguerite Humeau, Jean-Luc Moulène, Senga Nengudi, Matthew Ronay and Teresa Solar Abboud, among others. The sculptures that flow, ooze, erupt and explode, draw on irregular forms found in nature, relinquishing the rigidity of traditional sculpture for a language of transformation. The art exhibition is curated by Ralph Rugoff, Director of the Hayward Gallery, with Assistant Curator Katie Guggenheim and Curatorial Assistant Anusha Mistry. “Dynamic, exuberant and playful, the works in this show take visitors on an adventure into a world of fascinating forms. Whilst they avoid directly representing the human body, most of these artworks evince compelling corporeality—they remind us that there is a comedy, as well as a politics, of form,” says Rugoff.

The sculptures displayed in the show bring to the fore the notion of ever-changing entities and subsequently an ever-changing world. Expanding on this idea, the curator says, “Depending on the context, this can be an (indirectly) political assertion, in as much as the status quo always wants us to believe it is eternal.” In tandem with a subtle poignance, is a ‘comedy,’ as Rugoff calls it, of form, its utter absurdity, playfulness and physical humour. This dichotomy appears to set the curatorial direction of the exhibition.

Alive with spontaneous movement and tactility, the sculptures that come together in the exhibition fortify a common underlying theme of constant flux albeit materialised through diverse interpretations and creative expressions. Yet, despite their conspicuous disparities, a cohesive character of dynamism percolates through the art gallery. Speaking about the six decades of work displayed, the curator explains how the narrative does not aim to show ‘progress’ in the sphere of sculpture, but “charts a somewhat neglected vein of contemporary sculpture that has been developing for over 60 years, and in which many artists draw inspiration from the fluidity and liveliness of natural processes (but do not illustrate things from the natural world) while fashioning objects that have a visceral and tactile charge that can make us feel more alive.”

By positioning form, and its potential to be restless, at the centre of the show, the curation aims to emphasise the dwindling conversation around it in creative practices. According to the curator, art’s conceptual turn in recent decades has culminated in a lost connection between form and the perception of the artwork—this perception that, now, often arises from a press release or a statement about the artist's intentions. “Without inventive play of form, art has no magic, and its impact on us becomes one-dimensional,” notes Rugoff.

The essence of flux and animation is expressed quite literally in works such as Tara Donovan’s Untitled (Mylar), a sculpture created from thousands of flat, reflective discs of Mylar, reminiscent of a molecular constellation, evolving, growing, breathing. Soft materials such as foam and rubber render Michel Blazy’s cascading Bouquet Final subtly active. The ephemeral sculpture, like living beings, mutates and eventually disintegrates, but imperceptibly. Close by, DRIFT’s kinetic Shylights embody this dynamism through being in constant motion. “We connect with an interest in movement and in things being in flux, but we try to balance that out by bringing in movement so we can be still. We took a step to make it really move because it is not so much about the visual expression as it is about the non-verbal communication,” DRIFT tells STIR.

Teresa Solar Abboud’s three vibrant and surreal Tunnel Boring Machines reimagine the underground and the elements that ooze out from it in a composition of organic and industrial materials and forms. “For me, clay has always had to do not only with ancient forms of sculpture; clay has to do with this abstraction of the earth that we step on everyday, on which our civilisations are built, but in the end, is completely foreign to us,” Abboud explains. Industrial materials suggesting natural forms and landscapes can also be seen in untitled: modern sculpture by Phyllida Barlow, mirroring fleeting states of being or relationships.

Asawa’s classic wire sculptures made in the 1960s, translations of her observations of natural forms, are suspended from the ceiling of the upper floors of the Hayward Gallery, in nearly inconspicuous motion. The same lightness of form and feeble frame echoes in R.S.V.P. Reverie ‘D’ and Water Composition I by Senga Nengudi. The post-minimalist and process-oriented artist embraced an aesthetic that departed from the sleek monolithic sculptures of the time, such as Donald Judd’s. In stark contrast to this lightness and adding to the show’s diverse lineup, is a set of visually heavy sculptures, some even “tired.” Brzeski’s absurd Little Orphan sculptures are composed by twisting and distorting raw slabs of cast iron and placing them on chairs—their weight appearing to lounge and slump. Speaking of his creations, Brzeski says, “These are actually super tired being displayed; they have to be ready all the time and are working all the time,” lending a twist on his interpretation of the ‘restlessness’ underlining the other sculptures at the exhibition. Glimpses of the absurd and the comedic are lucid in the pieces by Franz West and wooden sculptures by Matthew Ronay as well—vacillating between resembling living organisms and geological formations in their bulging and curving lines. Hill’s neon roller coaster-like large-scale sculpture in the exhibition space evokes memories of visceral highs and motion. In the striking composition, the artist alludes to the politics of Black joy and the historical exclusion of African-Americans from amusement parks in the United States.

As the show unfolds, the brutalist concrete chassis and minimal interiors of the Hayward Gallery break into a dialogue with the dancing, cascading and proliferating sculptures. The gallery morphs into a space that explores physical experience, inviting viewers to gaze, contemplate and be surprised by what a work of art says to them. By doing so, the show also reiterates a yearning for the tangible in an era defined largely by digitised and disembodied experiences. The pleasures of spontaneous movement and the subsequent immersion in the sensations that follow become the intended protagonists of the setting.

‘When Forms Come Alive’ will remain on view from February 7- May 6, 2024, at the Hayward Gallery in London, United Kingdom.