Jesús Rafael Soto built sculptures you couldn’t just look at. His Pénétrable series was the furthest that idea ever went.
Pénétrable BBL Jaune is about 4,000 yellow PVC tubes hanging from a white steel frame. From a distance, a solid wall of color. Step inside, and it gives way.
The tubes brush against you. You stop being an audience and become part of the piece.
Soto conceived it in 1999. His estate revived it in 2023 for the centenary of his birth. It’s now outside the Serpentine South in London, the first time his work has been installed outdoors in the UK.
What holds up is the refusal to perform. In a moment full of immersive environments built for photographs, this asks something quieter. The tubes sway. The light shifts. The boundary disappears.
On view at Serpentine South, London.
Photos © Copyright George Darrell, courtesy of Serpentine.
