Smith/Stewart- Enter Love and Enter Death

Superficially, this should not be the kind of work which encourages verbosity. That, at least, was my first impression. Then, spending a little time in the rooms of Inverleith House, first alone then later, on a return visit, in company, it became apparent that this is a strangely wonderful thing to experience, inexplicably touching, moving, immersing.

This is the current exhibition of Glasgow-based artists Smith/Stewart, an installation of black wooden beams intersecting, dissecting four rooms over two floors in the heart of Edinburgh's Botanics. In the first room, the first impression: two black beams hovering at eye level, cutting across the space of the room. They are utterly, utterly dark, as if deliberately contradicting the Impressionists' and secondary school art teachers' beloved refrain of "There is no such thing as black." There is indeed such a thing, and here it is, so dark it is like a void, a censorship of the very air of the middle of the room. It is nothing in its purest form, a black hole over our eyes excising the centre of our vision, throwing us off balance, skewing our perceptions in the white rooms of the gallery. Alone in the space, the beams draw in the eye, acting as a strange vacuum. When other people are present the works become interactive, their perfect positioning at a relatively universal head height causing a visual decapitation of the others in the space. The floating black strip, a three-dimensional manifestation of an old-fashioned censor's stripe, affects our interactions, creating a room of edited-out heads and faces of figures which are inexplicably still mobile. Simultaneously, the lack of perspective resultant from the extreme black of the beams inspires an image of the decapitated figures bearing the great stripes upon their shoulders.

The process of examining the space is, in turn, an unusual one. The duo's interest in action and reaction and, indeed, in the exploration of power is here manifest in the difficulty of moving through the rooms. Ducking and diving, the viewer is repeatedly surprised by the unexpected arrangements of the beams - T-forms, crosses invisible on first entrance. The segments through which we must move are reminiscent of pens, enclosures created by fencing reduced to a minimal signifier, the supposedly mere act of interfering with our vision resulting in disorientation, clumsy movement, a constant heedfulness of the gallerists' warnings to mind our heads. This reduction of sculpture to the minimal, the pure line utterly affecting our experience of and physical relation to the space itself, is reminiscent of the thread installations of Fred Sandback. It is refreshing, in an art world of assemblages and installations overloaded with iconography and signifiers, to witness the potentially overwhelming effect of work seemingly so simplified.

Beyond our literal, physical experience of the installation within the gallery the beams also have the effect of prompting a re-examination of Inverleith House and its surrounds. The horizontal lines cut across the room, leading the gaze to the walls into which they pretend to vanish, drawing us outwards to the world beyond. The structure alludes to its existence outwith the building, as if perhaps the gallery is a mere garb, a cloak around an ancient structure which has more to do with the natural surrounds than it does with the airy rooms and winding stairwell of the well-appointed Edinburgh townhouse. Somehow we become more aware of the trees, the grass, the view up to that oft-depicted Edinburgh skyline. The black beams have an almost primal effect - they are all, and also nothing. To somewhat plagiarise the title they are of love, and also of death.

These are works which have provoked strong reactions in those who have experienced them. A note in the visitor's book which seemed to sum up their strange, almost eerie effect: "At first I thought- 'what the hell?' But I've been back three times now. I don't know why." They inspire a pondering and reflection which is truly refreshing.