Sunday 27 November 2016

Anselm Kiefer - White Cube, Bermondsey

Anselm Kiefer, Rorate Caeli Desuper, 2016
Anselm Kiefer: Walhalla is at White Cube, Bermondsey until 12 February 2017

Kiefer’s big themes – German history and mythology, creation and destruction – are fully present in this hugely ambitious show which summons both the Walhalla of Norse myth - the enormous hall to which the dead battle-heroes, chosen by Odin, were led by the Valkyries -  and the 19th century Walhalla, the marbled-monument to Germanic heroes created by King Ludwig I of Bavaria. However, in place of the gold of myth and the splendid polished marble of Ludwig’s neo-classical temple, Kiefer’s Walhalla is in the colours of concrete and lead.  
Kiefer has transformed the central corridor of White Cube’s huge Bermondsey gallery into a bleak, gloomy, dormitory of steel beds made up with lead sheets and pillows. In the galleries leading off the corridor are sculptures, vast paintings and installations – one, installation, Arsenal, replete with giant lead books fills an entire gallery; the paintings, made of oil, acrylic, emulsion, clay and lead are of ruined concrete towers in a scarred landscape under apocalyptic skies.
Astonishing – a Gesamkunstwerk.
Listen to Kiefer interviewed about the exhibition on Radio 4’s Front Row; read reviews by William Cook, Emily Spicer, Caroline Elbaor and Jonathan Jones.
Listen to Wagner’s Entry of the Gods into Walhalla from Das Rheingold.
See also blog entries on Kiefer's 2014 RA exhibition here and here.
Click on images to enlarge.
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 1992-2016 (detail)
Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016
Anselm Kiefer, Sursum corda, 2016 (detail)
Anselm Kiefer, Arsenal, 1983-2016 (detail)
Anselm Kiefer, San Loreto, 2016
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view
Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016
Anselm Kiefer, nubes pluant ustem, 2016 (detail)

Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016
Anselm Kiefer, Gehäutete Landschaft, 2016 (detail)
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, installation view
Anselm Kiefer, from Walhalla, 2016
Anselm Kiefer, Walhalla, 2016

Sunday 20 November 2016

Jason Martin - Lisson Gallery

Jason Martin, Sawa, 2015
Jason Martin is at the Lisson Gallery until 7 January 2017
Jason Martin has been making gorgeous, textured, monochrome paintings for more than twenty years now. His new show at Lisson Gallery includes an intriguing development in the form of relief sculptures. Martin has made silver-plated casts of thick impasto, plaster forms shaped by his painterly gestures. They look fabulous.
Read a review by Matthew Rudman.
Watch a short video of Martin talking about this work. (Don’t read the Lisson’s press release - except as a master class in artspeak!) 
(Click on images to enlarge)
Jason Martin, Untitled (Davy’s Grey / Ivory Black), 2016
Jason Martin, Untitled (Coral Orange / Vermilion), 2016.
Jason Martin, Untitled (Ivory Black / Indian Yellow), 2016

Jason Martin, Fools of the Heart, 2016
Jason Martin, As Yet Untitled, 2015
Jason Martin, As Yet Untitled, 2016
Jason Martin, Itza, 2015
Jason Martin, Flintwinchthicken, 2015

Jason Martin, Untitled, 2016