There are plenty of ways into this show-stopping piece by UK artist Ben Woodeson. But explore just a little and you may find no way out. One or more of those rat traps will hold you fast.
Of course, that’s not an invitation to touch. The art itself would come off as badly as you. Spring the traps and you smash the neon. If all breakages must be paid for you’d be well out of pocket.
Still, it would make a good anecdote. And like most works by this artist there’s an implied narrative here in which something goes terribly wrong. In some ways, an accident would consummate them.
Due care was taken on my visit, but I still found myself pinned by the spectacle and then by thoughts about the short history of neon in art and the seductions of this element in urban spaces.
Woodeson’s piece throws off a surprising amount of heat. All artworks aspire to be a focal point, but this has shades of a campfire, at once the beginnings of civilisation and heart of its dangers.
To toast a reindeer chop or even a metaphorical marshmallow, as we are surely doing now, is to be consumed by whatever society comes together on these occasions. Again, no exit.
Woodeson sets the bait with an arrangement of abstract forms, in a material which is surely the best metonym for contemporary art. The piece is cynical in that way. He knows his vermin well.
But these loose forms suggest offcuts of neon, as if left over from the work of another, less risky artist. Of course all serious artists take risks; just not all of them would break your finger.
Rat Trap Neon was on show in Ben Woodeson: Obstacle at Berloni, London, between 29 May and 1 August 2015. You can read my 2014 interview with the artist on The Learned Pig.