My other half left the flat for two weeks in Thailand today, and I'm contending with solitude. It's not something I'm very good at, despite the fact I'd like to be. I've done lots of good and interesting things all day, but the sense of joy which comes from prattling on excitedly about them with Scuz is sorely lacking. Still, they were interesting indeed.
Firstly I went to see Crash: Homage To JG Ballard. It's at the Gagosian Gallery on Brittania Street, WC1X 9JD. That information is important, as there are two galleries, and I went to the Mayfair one this morning by mistake. The exhibition is utterly brilliant. Not only is the gallery itself the perfect place to look at art (polite attendants, nice big spaces with interesting angles) but the collection of art they'd put together was spot on. Highlights for me were Hans Bellmer's brutally pornographic, Dali-esque drawings, Jake and Dinos Chapman's 'Bang Wallop,' (I'll come back to that,) and Paul McCarthy's mechanical pig. The latter is a lifesize, lifelike model of a pig that lies sleeping on its side. Four movement detectors set it into motion, and it breathes, snores, twitches and, well, grins. It was unsettling, beautiful and spellbinding.
I very often go to galleries and kid myself I'm enjoying it/ being moved. At this one, I felt shivers of excitement. It's full of brave, clever, transcendental works about violence, machines, death and sex. I think I was expecting to scoff at some of the art that they'd chosen as 'inspired' by Ballard, but there wasn't a single piece that didn't arouse the same feelings his books do. There's something about it all, something about being turned on by icons of doom, that both he and all of these artists convey brilliantly.
Just to indulge myself, and to do it justice, I need to also recommend the terrifying, bitter-laughter-in-the-face-of-death effects of Adam McEwen's 'I'm so tired,' and, very strangely for me, Damien Hirst's 'When Logics Die.' I hadn't realised he'd ever done anything good.
And the icing on the cake? One of the first things you see as you enter the gallery is a stack of books. The cover carries a painting of a mangled car against an orange background, and is titled 'BANGWALLOP,' by J & D Ballard. It turns out that this is a version of Crash by Jake and Dinos Chapman. From a first glance, they've interspersed the original text with random phrases and keyboard symbols. Every time I open it, I read something strange and interesting. You can pick one of the books off the actual display, take it to the counter and pay £20 for it. There's only 1000. I might have just bought my first work of art.
1 comment:
I really like BANGWALLOP as well, it's neatly summarised by the spurious quote on the back cover - "Bangwallop is Crash crashed," Captain Oceanic.
The text inside is exactly as you would have if you rescued a file from a crashed disc without editing it. A neat little joke which I like a lot and at GBP 20 a copy a real bargain !
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