Virginia Overton, American artist, opening her first UK show at the White Cube Gallery (Mason’s Yard) this January. Wood, a live material, bending, contortioned into corners, against walls, suspended into space, breathing and breaking the architectural and clinical space of the gallery.

Overton says, in an interview at the White Cube, ‘The things that don’t work are sometimes the best things to come across because they send you in directions that you maybe weren’t willing to go in…’ this statement explores the idea behind her practice. Using whitewood as the foundation of her work in this show, Overton toys on uncertain grounds. This flexible and malleable material has been set, defying gravity, to evolve and follow its unpredictable course of life.

The artist let the ambivalence of this material accompany her in the decision making process of this exhibition. This trial and error routine led her to build installations responding and confronting the surrounding architectural spaces. Here, wood defies the ceiling, corners or emptiness and simultaneously complies with them. It is this confrontation that keeps us fixed in quiet suspenseful awe, as if the work would shift, visible to the naked eye, in one instant.

As you enter the main room, you find yourself amidst a large-scale arch, the wood planks running from floor to ceiling. The uneven perspective casts light-filled slits where the sun sharply divides the open space. The planks mirroring the growth of vines seem to have extended from the floor up. Nature has taken over concrete; it has woven its way through the razor-sharp walls altering the angular room into rounded imperfection.

We find a gravitational play downstairs where three long, hollow wooden boxes are hung discretely from the ceiling at different heights, their weight and force triggering a slow shifted rotation. We become part of their movement; our sense perception is heightened to its maximum as we sway with them. We forget that they are strung up; we forget that they defy gravity; we just are within. Whilst approaching them, we notice that they are hollow, peering through to the other side. These structures seem to exist, in their force and fragility, out of time yet anchored within the space.

The last room, concise, between two elevators and a flight of stairs unveils a cascade of stacked wooden planks in a corner, like a deck of cards or an accordion. This architectural intersection seems to be plunging out of control. We don’t want to get too close, fearing it might topple but as we do, we notice its grandeur and strength. This structure feels alive, breathing, ethereal. The spaces between each plank create an overall pump-like object giving potential for the work to move, up and down, back and fourth, an organ of life.

Overton reaches out to our raw senses with this exhibition. The minimalism in the choice of material and disposition of work makes way for our sensitivity. We become part of the space, not just as an observer but as an element within. We feel the roughness of the material; it’s weight or defiant weightlessness, its volume or how it plays with the space it occupies. This exhibition appeals to our utmost primary instincts. It calls for a hush of silence in order to absorb its message.