Magnetised Space at the Serpentine Gallery constitutes a retrospective of the work of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, and is incidentally the late artist’s first major UK exhibition. The exhibition blurb introduces us to one of the founding members of Brazil’s neo-concrete movement; an artist concerned with incorporating art into everyday life, whose work explores themes of sensuality, invention, ethics, and poetic feeling. The title Magnetised Space refers to the semantics of movement, attraction, and repulsion taken from Pape’s description of Rio de Janeiro, where the artist observes relationships forming within urban contexts. Overall, this concept is reflected well within the retrospective, but at times Pape’s reference to it is quite subtle. The movement created by Pape’s use of line and shape in her series of Sem Titulo works, placed mid-way through the exhibition, make these sketches appear as if they were moving concentrically towards a middle space. The same effect is achieved in a series of photographs showing a crowd gravitating towards a break-dancing street performance in a manner akin to iron filings gathering towards a magnet, an example of the visual exploration of the tension between distance and collective pull.

Shape is a main focus of Pape’s work; the limits and possibilities surrounding a selection of motifs of block coloured squares and triangles become a recurring motif throughout a series of media. Book of Time shows them on the greatest scale, becoming a three-dimensional wall likened to a real life game of Tetris, tessellating and tangible.

Video works such as Eat Me (1975) in the first room, set a confusing tone apart from the rest of the exhibition. With their grainy sensuality, and peculiar 1970’s porn associations, the variety and mastery of Pape’s work within her selected motifs is compelling, culminating in the sparse and epic Web (2011).

Until Feb 19

NATASHA MORRIS