What the public makes of the Art Gallery of NSW's new building with its underground Tank space is yet to be seen but one artist at least is already in love.
"I think any artist... would die to show here, not only in the Tank, anywhere in this building... I love this space," sculptor Adrian Villar Rojas said.
The Argentinian artist has executed the very first commission for the Tank Gallery, with a series of five sculptures titled The End of Imagination.
He remembers seeing the disused fuel bunker for the first time in 2018, climbing down through a manhole and finding the dark and disorienting space part-filled with water.
"We always wanted to keep, to retain and share with audience that very early experience," Villar Rojas said at a media preview this week.
His sculpture series was generated through computer-simulated worlds, that were then rendered in three dimensions, in a studio in Argentina set up for the commission.
The works are at once earthy and otherworldly, evoking the groping tree roots that had grown down into the space before its restoration.
Roving lights illuminate the giant shapes, and also play off 125 columns measuring seven meters high, making dramatic shadows and at times leaving the space in darkness.
The inaugural commission is a unique and fleeting opportunity, Villar Rojas said, because the visiting public will be surprised by what they encounter.
"It's a fragile moment that we have... the next commission will have to deal with the fact that people know what's waiting," he said.
An installer working on the commission found the space to be like a cathedral, according to AGNSW's head curator of international art Justin Paton.
"It was a space that was at once daunting and wondrous, and those are qualities we would love visitors to experience when they descend into the Tank," he said.
Those qualities are also likely to be a challenge for gallery-goers: the eerie darkness, the smell, the bizarre and discomfiting acoustics require an act of will to spend an extended amount of time there.
"It's a bodily experience. You have to commit yourself to navigate the space. It's a very physical journey as well," Villar Rojas said.
It's certainly exciting but the Tank's enveloping atmosphere may over time become a limitation, as it determines and restricts the art that can be shown there.
Visitors may also find the Tank itself so overwhelming that the art, no matter how good, merely adds to their encounter with the underworld.
And with the public set to arrive on Saturday, how will it fare with 15,000 people registered to visit on opening weekend alone?
For his part, Paton believes the Tank is the new building's architectural trump card.
He said artists who have seen it are full of ideas for future projects.
"There is something about it that really unlatches the imagination and gets people dreaming," he said.
The new building is part of the $344 million Sydney Modern project and opens to the public on Saturday.
AAP travelled with the assistance of AGNSW.
Australian Associated Press
