Dezeen reviews Alex Hartley: After You Left

Modernist ruin in London canal provides a glimpse at an uncertain future. By Emma Tucker

British artist Alex Hartley has installed this crumbling modernist ruin in the gardens of London's Victoria Miro Gallery.

The installation, entitled A Gentle Collapsing II, has been designed to resemble an abandoned and decaying modernist building.

The piece was specifically designed for the gallery's canal-side garden and intended to present "a situation of ambiguous cause and uncertain outcome".

"The work offers poignant reflection on themes of entropy and decay," said Victoria Miro gallery. "It is, in some ways, emblematic of a wider collapsing – of ideals or even spirit."

"Running contrary to such thoughts, however, is the undeniable aesthetic pleasure we find in ruins – their compelling, transportative quality," it continues. "In this sense, A Gentle Collapsing II becomes a kind of time machine that frees the mind to wander, gently collapsing or dislocating a sense of linear time as it does so."

Typical of modernist architecture, the building is characterised by simple forms and a lack of decoration. It takes its cues from pioneers of the movement such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier – who recently had 17 of his buildings added to UNESCO's World Heritage List.

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