Highlights of London Part 3

The 9th annual Frieze Art Fair opened on Wednesday morning...scattering the VIP entry times avoided the uncomfortable crunch witnessed at the opening of Art Basel in June.  Frieze hosted 173 of the world's leading contemporary galleries, representing 33 countries and presenting works by over 1000 artists. There are also satellite fairs including Pavilion of Art & Design.  Many galleries continue to impress and titillate the senses. Here are a few of my favorites:  Emmanuel Perrotin's booth showing a life-sized morgue wall and dead body sculpture by Elmgreen and Dragset, Thomas Dane's booth showing Michael Landy's kinetic sculpture, "Credit Card Destroying Machine" and White Cube's Marc Quinn "Zombie Boy."

Wednesday evening kicked off the contemporary auctions. Bonham’s, which opened on New Bond Street in their renovated premises, joined the auction brigade this season to become the fourth auction house to hold contemporary sales in London. The results of the evening sales varied as follows:

Christie's sale totaled GBP 38,000,000 with 89% sold, Sotheby's totaled GBP 17,800,000 with 77% sold, Phillips de Pury totaled GBP 8,200,000 with 67% sold and Bonham's totaled GBP 2,042,000 with 70% sold. The Christie's auction had the best quality and therefore had the best results. The lackluster works offered at the other auction houses did not attract lots of bidding, thus works went on the low side or did not sell. Quality always prevails!

On the way to the airport, four galleries caught my eye.  

Pilar Ordovas' exhibition, "Irrational Marks: Bacon, Rembrandt" in her new space on Savile Row, shows how Rembrandt's "Self-Portrait with Beret" from 1659 influenced Bacon. This can be seen in a video of Bacon discussing Rembrandt on the lower level of the gallery.

  

The Luxembourg-Dayan gallery inaugurated their new space on Savile Row with part I of "Grisaille" curated by Alison Gingeras, part II opening in New York on November 7th. Works inspired by the absence of color included the workshop of Durer, Picasso, Richter, Leger, Rob Pruitt and Twombly.  

On view on Mount Street at Modern Collections, the new secondary market gallery is, "Walker Walker Guyton Guyton" under the directorship of Iniigo Philbrick.  It features Kelly Walker and Wade Guyton who met many years ago and who are the darlings of the art world at the moment. 

My last stop was a visit to my friend Wim Delvoye's first solo exhibition at Robilant+Voena on Dover Street. This Belgian conceptual artist's work ranges from intricate steel sculptures to tattooed pig-skins. The Louvre will have an exhibition of Wim's works in the near future, many of which I saw in his studio in Ghent this summer. 

Off to Heathrow! 

Highlights of London Part 2

Tacita Dean, the British artist born in Canterbury, Kent in 1965, now based in Berlin was the latest artist to create a commission for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall as part of the Unilever Series. "Film" opened Monday evening. A flickering 11-minute silent color film is projected on to a vertical screen 13 meters high. This piece is intended to mourn and to celebrate celluloid at a time when 16mm film is no longer even printed in the UK.

It was possible to view Gerhard Richter's retrospective "Panorama" the same evening, which had opened a few days earlier.  Richter is known for his diversity in his approaches to painting. The title evokes the intention to look around at the range of Richter's practice, discovering contradictions and connections, continuities and breaks. The exhibition includes glass constructions, mirrors, drawings and photographs. He is inspired by Titian, Vermeer, Caspar David Friedrich and Duchamp. He was born in Dresden in 1932 and since 1983 lives and works in Cologne.  

Tuesday morning, October 12th was the press preview for Jacob Kassay at the ICA.  It was a pleasure to have the curator, Matt Williams, give me the tour. Kassay is a very young artist born in Buffalo in 1984. He lives and works in NY and LA. This is his first solo European exhibition. His canvases are simultaneously painting, sculpture and interactive installation. The silver-plated paintings on the lower gallery create expansive surfaces that come alive with the presence of the viewers. The installation is brilliant as it captures the changing light throughout the day. The wooden structure releases the canvases from their status as single units, combining them into a larger composite installation that functions as both architectural support and environment. In the upper galleries, a series of white shaped monochrome canvases appear in conversation with each other and the surrounding architecture. A stunning installation!

Tuesday evening marked the spectacular opening of White Cube Bermondsey in South London, Jay Joplin's third space. It boasts 58,000 square feet of interior space, designed by Casper Mueller Kneer Architects based in London and Berlin. A refurbished warehouse from the 1970's, the building includes three primary exhibition spaces, substantial warehousing, private viewing rooms, an auditorium and a bookshop. In the South Galleries, which will feature White Cube's expanding program of significant exhibitions, works could be viewed by various artists including Andreas Gursky, Wade Guyton, Eberhard Havekost, Damien Hirst, Jacob Kassay, Sterling Ruby Erin Shirreff and Jeff Wall in an exhibition entitled "Structure & Absences", a fresh look at contemporary abstraction. 

The night being young, the next opening was Josephine Meckseper's exhibition at Timothy Taylor's gallery. Josephine was born in Germany in 1964 and lives and works in NY.  She is a photo, video and installation artist who offers a striking, multi-layered account of the extent to which consumerism pervades our lives. Meckseper states, "The basic foundation of my work is a critique of capitalism."  Her politically engaged works highlight ongoing problems of corporate corruption, status anxiety, social privilege and representations of women. "There is no separation between materialism and political ideology: we are what we buy." Josephine will be included in the Saatchi Gallery's new exhibition entitled "New Art From Germany", November 18, 2011-April 30, 2012.

Highlights of London Part 1

My whirlwind week in London began on Monday morning with a visit to the White Cube gallery in Mason's Yard to view Raqib Shaw's "Paradise Lost", a new series of work by the London based artist. Shaw creates a visionary ode to his own childhood memories and imaginary paradise, inspired by Greek mythology. Do not miss the exquisitely painted bronze sculptures in the ground floor of the gallery.

Continuing on to White Cube's Hoxton Square gallery, Elad Lassry's first solo exhibition in London reveals a new departure in photography. The objects he chooses such as cats and vases are both banal and captivating.  His work questions representation and object hood. Lassry was born in Tel Aviv in 1977 and lives and works in LA.

The next stop was the Gagosian gallery on Britannia Street to view Mike Kelley's large-scale installation "Exploded Fortress of Solitude".  Kelley depicts Superman's Fortress of Solitude as a sort of bunker in ruins. The viewer is invited into the forbidden fortress, set within the cave's inner recesses, which is a glowing rose colored city in a bottle. The evocation of war and destruction and isolation creates a despairing dark ambience, from which one seeks a quick escape. Kelly was born in Detroit in 1954 and lives in LA.

On to Wharf Road to view Yang Fudong's "One half of August" at Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art.  He is a renowned artist and filmmaker and one of the most important artists to emerge in contemporary China. "One half of August" is an eight-screen, black and white, HD installation for which the artist projects scenes from earlier works onto architectural elements, props, structures and objects built for the purpose. He also includes artifacts, uses light and inverts external space. This creates new realities that challenge one's vision and mind. One wonders if one is watching a film or a film in a film.  Fudong was born in 1971 in Beijing and lives and works in Shanghai.