Rachel Whiteread
Demolished 1996
Gagosian GalleryFebruaury 11th - April 1st 2010
Tuesday - Saturday 10 am - 6 pm
Gagosian Gallery presents an exhibition of a mixture of relics, influences and works inspired by the dystopian ficiton of
J G Ballard, in particular his most famous novel
Crash. The novel -
made into a film in 1996 by David Cronenberg - is a psycho-sexual tale of car-crash fetishism (
Symphorophilia). We are treated here to an all-star line up of artists in an expertly curated exhibition that moves between pieces that by turn inspired Ballard (Dali, early British Pop Art), or reflect his concerns and fascinations - autophilia, crashes, accidents and disasters, high rises and suburban wastelands, destruction, and an often sexually charged mixture of the organic and the mechanical.
Installation view
Crash, Gagosian Gallery, foreground: Adam McEwan
Honda Teen Facial 2010
Upon entering the gallery we encounter the disembodied undercarriage of a Boeing 747 - Adam McEwan's Honda Teen Facial (2010 above). The piece resonates with a sense of disaster and sets the tone for the exhibition. The rooms are arranged thematically, begining with a selection of surrealist works that inspired Ballard to find a "fiction for the present day"1, works that traverse similar territory to his writing in the main galleries and a 3rd gallery of works inspired by or made in honour of the writer. Against the somber grey walls of the 3rd gallery, Rachel Whitereed's Demolished (1996 above) stands out, activated and invigorated by the context.
Jane and Louise Wilson's Proton, Unity, Energy, Blizzard (2000), a 4 screen video projection, depicts shots of the abandoned sites of the former USSR's space program - a depopulated mixture of desolate wilderness and awesome technological construction. The bassy rumble of the soundtrack permeates the entire exhibition intermittently.
The list of artists included (below) is an undeniably impressive one and the pieces selected are all fine examples of their work, arranged in a structure that creates a looming and prolonged discord. Locked within the visual language of a show loaded with associations, the works function to create a fractured, rhizomatic network of signs, informing one another in counterpoints and harmonies in order to extract the dark, foreboding, and perverse terrors of Ballard's vision of society. The powerful sense of narrative allows the work to operate in interesting new ways, generating new readings of familiar practices. Damien Hirst's arrangements of surgical implements, Jenny Saville's grand-scaled, expertly daubed images of mutilation (below), and
Roger Hiorns' crystaline BMW engines are cases in point.
Paul McCarthy's Mechanical Pig (2003 - 2005) was perhaps the most striking example of a piece to under go this transformation for me; it's combination of the mechanical and organic, the maternal and the monstrous, with it's working parts laid bare, is so perfectly situated within this context, it's almost as though it were created with this exhibition in mind.
Jeremy Deller's Another Country (The Mall London 3/9/97) 1997 was one of the more surprising inclusions in the show. A collection of photographs of floral tributes and a poem to Diana, Princess of Wales, taken in the aftermath of her death in 1997, it was a somber and poetic record of a moment in the collective consciousness, that abounds with associations of an underlying widespread public fascination with death.
Jenny Saville
Witness 2009
One of the best contemporary art shows I've seen in London this year, Crash is at Gagosian, Britannia Street, until April 1st. The full list of artists included is as follows:
Richard Artschwager, Francis Bacon, JG Ballard, Hans Bellmer, Glenn Brown, Chris Burden, Jake & Dinos Chapman, John Currin, Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Paul Delvaux, Cyprien Gaillard, Douglas Gordon, Loris Gréaud, Richard Hamilton, John Hilliard and Jemima Stehli, Roger Hiorns, Damien Hirst, Dan Holdsworth, Carsten Höller, Edward Hopper, Allen Jones, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Roy Lichtenstein, Vera Lutter, Florian Maier-Aichen, Paul McCarthy, Adam McEwen, Dan Mitchell, Malcolm Morley, Mike Nelson, Helmut Newton, Cady Noland, Claes Oldenburg, Eduardo Paolozzi, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Jenny Saville, George Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Piotr Uklański, Andy Warhol, Rachel Whiteread, Christopher Williams, Jane and Louise Wilson, Christopher Wool and Cerith Wyn Evans.
Images here.
1. http://www.gagosian.com/exhibitions/2010-02-11_crash/
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