a field of yellow sedges in Kensington Gardens
Across the lawn near Serpentine South, a rectangular volume of yellow lines by artist Jesús Rafael Soto now sits in the outdoor space of Kensington Gardens, capturing the movement of visitors as well as the movement of the park around it.
Entitled Penetrable BBL Yellow (1999, 2023 Edition), the booth launches SerpentineThe 2026 summer program brings one of the Venezuelan artist’s immersive kinetic sculptures outdoors to the UK for the first time.
From 16 June to 25 October 2026, the project extends the Serpentine’s exhibition program beyond the gallery walls and into the landscape that has long shaped its public identity.
The sculpture arrives alongside the launch of Atelier LANZA’s 25th Serpentine Pavilion season (see here) and an archive exhibition, creating a summer campus built around art, architecture and vibrant public programming.
Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrable BBL Yellow (1999; Release 2023). © Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy of Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine
Soto’s kinetic sculpture invites visitors inside
Born in Venezuela in 1923, Jesus Rafael Soto became a central figure in kinetic art through a practice that treated space as active, natural and unstable. In a career spanning seven decades, the artist he created more than seventy Pénétrable sculptures in different sizes and colors, each consisting of floating elements that visitors could enter with their bodies.
The work installed at the Serpentine is based on Pénétrable BBL Jaune, first designed and executed by Soto in 1999 and re-released by the artist’s estate in 2023 to mark the centenary of his birth.
Ten meters long, the sculpture is formed from 4,000 identical PVC threads suspended from a rectangular steel frame, with narrow gaps between each tube creating a moiré effect that makes the vertical field shimmer from a distance.
Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrable BBL Yellow (1999; Release 2023). © Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy of Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine
a sculpture shaped by movement
As visitors pass through the yellow strands, the work shifts from a visual object to a physical experience. The suspended tubes brush, split and close again, turning each step into a small change in the density and rhythm of the sculpture.
Soto created his first Pénétrable in 1967, expanding the sculpture into a situation where the viewer becomes part of the movement of the work. At the Serpentine, this idea plays out in the open park, where the yellow volume sits among trees, paths and passing crowds, drawing people into a work that changes through contact.
‘Contrary to what we have always believed, space is not something that is filled with objects,‘ Soto explains in a conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist that took place in Paris in March 2004. ‘Objects actually fill up space. Space flows. Nothing limits it. I’m interested in showing people who are interested in space as a quality or global density that it is actually space that controls – defines and sets its own terms.‘
Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrable BBL Yellow (1999; Release 2023). © Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy of Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine
Jesús Rafael Soto, Penetrable BBL Yellow (1999; Release 2023). © Jesús Rafael Soto / ADAGP, Paris 2026. courtesy of Atelier Soto, Paris. photo: George Darrell. courtesy Serpentine
