Steve McQueen: Bass

Over a thousand LED tubes replace the standard ceiling lights, casting the monumental interior in gradually shifting chromatic atmospheres. From deep crimson to hazy indigo, from electric white to ultraviolet, the entire visible spectrum is activated. These illuminated ‘contour lines’ stretch across five levels like luminous pathways, subtly altering how one navigates the space, how one breathes within it.

At the heart of it all: a vertical column of subwoofers and speakers suspended in mid-air. It’s both futuristic and totemic, an impossible structure that seems to float despite its massive weight. From this acoustic core, sound radiates outward: sometimes suggestive of melody, at other times reduced to pure vibration. The bass tones oscillate between presence and absence, clarity and murk. You don’t just hear them; you absorb them. I could feel the pressure in my sternum. My skin prickled. I wandered slowly, unsure of where to stand, or whether I should be moving at all. The installation has no beginning or end, only duration. At one point, I closed my eyes and simply listened. With no visual anchor, I slipped into a kind of trance. The architectural scale, the frequency range, the colour saturation — it all accumulated. Time began to stretch.

And then something curious happened. I felt a soft release, like something loosening inside. Not dramatic but real. A moment of transcendence. It felt almost therapeutic, as if the vibrations were recalibrating my body, washing through tension I didn’t know I carried. There is care in the way McQueen composes this overwhelming environment: it never tips into aggression, but rather hovers on that threshold where intensity becomes healing.

What’s remarkable is how silent the work actually is in between those rumbling frequencies. The quiet becomes part of the composition. Visitors moved carefully, almost reverently. We had all given in to the same current. There was a shared sense of stillness, as though we were underwater, suspended in some shared field of sensation. In a cultural moment saturated with stimulation, McQueen offers a rare proposition: immersion without imagery, spectacle without distraction. He creates a space to simply be. Not passive, but porous.

Leaving the exhibition, I felt altered — lightheaded, re-tuned, emptied and recharged all at once. It stayed with me long after. The hum, the colours, the weightless pressure. Even now, I sometimes feel the echo of it, like a memory that bypassed language and went straight to the body. This is immersion at its most distilled: not an escape from the world, but a deep dive into its pulse.