211115 – Calder – Tate Modern, London

Every architectural student has probably tried to incorporate the spatial fluency of a Calder into a plan, a section or circulation diagram. Trying to retain the lightness and delicacy of the Calder in the heavy and rigid embodiment of architecture and like most students tried and I failed. A Calder is like a dance, it is an event that happens in a space and is not the space itself. The Calder exhibition is charming. The work is filled with the desperation to create beauty out of nothing. Its context is either between wars or immediately postwar. The materials used are minimal, the tooling simplistic and the ideas initially colloquial. Out of all this emerges a kinetic abstraction and a new international modern. This is an impressive biographical exhibition of one mans life’s work. A must see.