{"id":502885,"date":"2026-06-16T17:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T17:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/502885\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T17:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T17:51:13","slug":"jesus-rafael-soto-suspends-4000-yellow-strands-for-serpentine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/502885\/","title":{"rendered":"jes\u00fas rafael soto suspends 4,000 yellow strands for serpentine"},"content":{"rendered":"

a field of yellow strands in kensington gardens<\/p>\n

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Across the grass near Serpentine South, a rectangular volume of yellow lines by artist Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto now sits in the open air of Kensington Gardens, catching the movement of visitors as much as the movement of the park around it.<\/p>\n

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Entitled P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune (1999, 2023 Edition), the pavilion launches Serpentine<\/a>\u2019s 2026 summer program, bringing one of the Venezuelan artist\u2019s immersive kinetic sculptures outdoors in the UK for the first time.<\/p>\n

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On view from June 16th \u2014 October 25th, 2026, the work extends Serpentine\u2019s exhibition program beyond the gallery walls and into the landscape that has long shaped its public identity.<\/p>\n

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The sculpture arrives alongside the opening season of LANZA atelier\u2019s 25th Serpentine Pavilion (see here<\/a>) and an archive display, setting up a summer campus built around art, architecture, and live public programming.<\/p>\n

\"Jes\u00fas
Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto, P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune (1999;2023 Edition). \u00a9 Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto \/ ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine<\/p>\n

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soto\u2019s kinetic sculpture invites visitors inside<\/p>\n

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Born in Venezuela in 1923, Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto became a central figure in kinetic art through a practice that treated space as active, physical, and unstable. Across a seven-decade career, the artist<\/a> created more than seventy P\u00e9n\u00e9trable sculptures in different sizes and colors, each composed from suspended elements that visitors could enter with their bodies.<\/p>\n

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The work installed at Serpentine is based on P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune, first conceived and executed by Soto in 1999 and relaunched by the artist\u2019s estate in 2023 to mark the centenary of his birth.<\/p>\n

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Spanning ten meters in length, the sculpture is formed from 4,000 identical PVC strands hung from a rectangular steel framework, with narrow gaps between each tube creating a moir\u00e9 effect that makes the vertical field flicker from a distance.<\/p>\n

\"Jes\u00fas
Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto, P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune (1999;2023 Edition). \u00a9 Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto \/ ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine<\/p>\n

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a sculpture shaped by movement<\/p>\n

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As visitors pass through the yellow strands, the work shifts from an optical object into a bodily experience. The suspended tubes brush, part, and close again, turning each step into a small change in the sculpture\u2019s density and rhythm.<\/p>\n

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Soto created his first P\u00e9n\u00e9trable in 1967, expanding sculpture into a situation where the viewer becomes part of the work\u2019s movement. At Serpentine, that idea plays out in the open park, where the yellow volume sits among trees, pathways, and passing crowds, drawing people into a work that changes through contact.<\/p>\n

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\u2018Contrary to what we have always believed, space is not something that is filled with objects,\u2018 Soto explains in a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist that took place in Paris in March 2004. \u2018Objects are in fact filled with space. Space flows. Nothing limits it. I\u2019m interested in showing people who are interested in space as a quality or a universal density that in fact it is space that is in control \u2013 it defines and sets its own conditions.\u2018<\/p>\n

\"Jes\u00fas
Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto, P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune (1999;2023 Edition). \u00a9 Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto \/ ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine<\/p>\n

\"jes\u00fas
Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto, P\u00e9n\u00e9trable BBL Jaune (1999;2023 Edition). \u00a9 Jes\u00fas Rafael Soto \/ ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"a field of yellow strands in kensington gardens \u00a0 Across the grass near Serpentine South, a rectangular volume…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":502886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60,107855],"class_list":["post-502885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-serpentine-gallery-pavilion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=502885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/502885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/502886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=502885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=502885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=502885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}