Richard Serra - Gagosian

Richard Serra, Rotate, 2016

Richard Serra: NJ-2, Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, Rotate is at Gagosian, London until 25 February 2017.
Three large-scale steel sculptures by Richard Serra are on show at Gagosian's Britannia Street gallery and some of his Composite Drawings are on display at their Davies Street gallery until 17 December.

I don’t think I have ever been disappointed by a Richard Serra exhibition: in the last 2 years I have seen his previous show at Gagosian London (2014, see below) and last year I saw his work at Dia: Beaon which includes his monumental Torqued Ellipses (see below). The simple but massive, physical and elemental forms are strangely exhilarating – in particular those works into which the viewer can enter – for example, NJ-2 in the current show. 
The work is concerned with weight, gravity and form. As Serra says, in conversation with Michael Craig-Martin:

I’m involved with evolution of form, the connection where space and matter meet. One of the things that form constantly has to do is reach a point where it pushes back against content…. matter informs form. That is the basis of my work: it always has been … I think the way that we understand the world is through weight and gravity. All our gestures, all our movements, the rhythm of our body, every time we turn, every time we take a step, every time we move, the gravitational load impinges on us. (Read the full text here.)

It’s exciting stuff.

Richard Serra, NJ-2, 2016

Richard Serra, NJ-2, 2016 (detail)

Richard Serra, Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure, 2016

Richard Serra, Composite 1-9, 2016

Howard Hodgkin - Gagosian

Howard Hodgkin, Party, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin: Indian Waves is at Gagosian (Davies Street) until 31 January 2015.
I have tended to fall in and out of love with Howard Hodgkin's paintings. It is almost 30 years since my first infatuation inspired by his exhibition Forty Paintings at the Whitechapel in 1985. Since then there have been times when over exposure to the vivid, sensuous richness of his colours has, like too much rich food, left me unable to face any more and in need of something more ascetic. Now, however, I am ready to be seduced again. The pictures in this exhibition are gouache paintings over prints (a blue wavy line with an arc of green above) made on hand made Indian paper. Made between 1990 and 1991 and inspired by one of Hodgkin's many visits to India they deploy an exhilerating palette of colours.

Howard Hodgkin, Border, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Orange Sunset, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Storm at Sea, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Storm in Goa, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Surf, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Yellow Rainbox, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Turbulent Waters, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Sea Fog, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Another Rainbow, 1990-91

Howard Hodgkin, Mumbai Wedding, 1990-91

Richard Serra - Gagosian

Richard Serra, Dead Load, 2014, forged steel

Richard Serra is at Gagosian, London until 28 February 2015.
Four tremendous steel sculptures by Richard Serra are on show at Gagosian's Britannia Street gallery and a five metre 'drawing' is on display at their Davies Street gallery until 22 November. I haven't seen the latter but can vouch for the power of the sculptures. As the artist explained in an exchange with Adrian Searle the selected works offer "different ways to approach a field or a space or a context". Dead Load presents the literal embodiment of massive, dead weight; Backdoor Pipeline is a huge, curved, elliptical tunnel through which the viewer can walk to experience the interplay of convex and concave and the changing play of light and dark; Ramble is a room full of 24 upright slabs of steel of varying dimensions between which one has to navigate a route; finally, London Cross is perhaps the 'classic' Serra in which one threateningly enormous wall of steel is balanced, above head height, diagonally across another. Thrilling stuff.
Read Adrian Searle's review. Watch a video tour of the installation. (All photographs by Mike Bruce / Gagosian.)

Richard Serra, Backdoor Pipeline, 2010

Richard Serra, Ramble, 2014

Richard Serra, London Cross, 2014

Richard Serra, Double Rift #2, 2011 (Painstick on handmade paper - at Davies Street gallery)

The Show is Over - Gagosian

The Show is Over - well, it is now: Gagosian's exhibition finished on 30 November. However, I was very pleased to catch it a couple of days beforehand.

Christopher Wool,  Billboard, Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, 1991

A big group show including some big names - Warhol, Serra, Ryman, Twombly, Manzoni, Marden, Prince... (who just happen to be some of my personal favourites) and some that were new to me - Dan Colen, Gregor Hildebrandt, this was (according to the press release) ostensibly about abstraction and the end of painting, often proposed but never concluded. The selected works featured monochromes and a variety of challenges to the limits of painting and to the integrity of the picture plane (eg burning and slashing - by Yves Klein and Lucio Fontana respectively). I would have liked to buy the interesting looking catalogue and explored this idea further - but at £65 that wasn't going to happen! On the other hand, I was happy to come away with a piece of free art, courtesy of a collaboration between Felix González-Torres and Christopher Wool: visitors were free to remove sheets from the solid block formed by a neat stack of posters.
Below is a selection of my favourite pieces in the show. 
Read reviews by Jackie Wullschlager and Dan Coombs. See a video tour of the installation here.

Christopher Wool and Felix González-Torres

Andy Warhol, Little Electric Chair, 1965

Richard Prince, Untitled, 2012 (Rubber band, inkjet, staples, and acrylic on mounted newsprint)

Richard Serra, Elevational Weights, Black Matter, 2010

Robert Ryman, Untitled, 1963

Albert Oehlen, Untitled, 2008

Gerhard Richter, Grau (Grey), 1970

Cy Twombly, Untitled (New York City), 1968

Dan Colen, hippity flippity!, 2012 (Tar and feathers on canvas)

The Floor Show: Gravity and Materials - Gagosian, Beverly Hills

Robert Therrien, No title (pallet), 2007

Oh to be in California! I ususally confine myself to listing UK shows, but The Floor Show: Gravity and Materials at Gagosian, Beverly Hills looks to be such a splendid exhibition, I couldn't resist giving it a mention. An exhibition that includes work by Andy Warhol, Carl Andre and Richard Serra is, I think, something worth knowing about. The piece by Robert Therrien (above) is new to me but is destined to enter my personal canon of great works. Other featured artists include, Richard Long, Rachel Whiteread, Mike Kelley, Robert Morris, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Tom Sachs, Lynda Benglis, John Chamberlain and Barry Le Va - watch a video of the 'smashing' installation of Le Va's piece (below), here. The exhibition continues until 28 July.

Baryy Le Va, Set I A placed B placed; Set II A dropped. B dropped.; Set III A placed. B dropped.; Set IV placed, 1968

Andy Warhol, Dance Diagram, 1962

Richard Serra, Malmo Roll, 1984

Rachel Whiteread, Black Bed, 1991

Tom Sachs, 4' x 8' Sheet of Plywood, 2011

Installation view of Floor Show: Gravity and Materials, with work by (left to right), Lynda Benglis, Richard Serra, Richard Long and Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Thomas Ruff - Gagosian Gallery

Thomas Ruff, nudes dr02, 2011

Astronomy and pornography are the twin preoccupations which, via the internet, supply the material for Thomas Ruff's two exhibitions at Gagosian Gallery: MA.R.S is at the Britannia Street gallery and Nudes is at Davies Street (both until 21 April). 

Ruff is a graduate of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, famous for the influential teaching of Bernd and Hilla Becher on a generation of photographers which includes Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer as well as Ruff.

For the MA.R.S series Ruff has injected colour into black and white images of Mars, taken from the NASA web site; for Nudes he has taken images from internet pornography, enlarged them to monumental scale producing blurred and painterly images. 

Read Geoff Dyer's essay: Porn and the shadow side of paradise: ThomasRuff's Nudes. See also 2003 article in Tate Magazine and video of Ruff talking about his work in 2010.

Thomas Ruff, ma.r.s. 04_III, 2012

Thomas Ruff, ma.r.s. 01_III, 2012

Thomas Ruff, nudes ro04 (detail), 2011

Damien Hirst: The Complete Spot Paintings, 1986 - 2011 - Gagosian

Damien Hirst, N-Methylurea, 2005

As a taster for the Tate Modern's forthcoming Damien Hirst retrospective (4 April - 9 September), Gagosian has launched its ambitious, if slightly batty, global exhibition of the Complete Spot Paintings, 1986-2011. The exhibition will take place at once across all of Gagosian Gallery’s eleven locations in New York, London, Paris, Los Angeles, Rome, Athens, Geneva, and Hong Kong, opening worldwide on 12 January and continuing until 10 March. If you have the time and money to pop into all 11 exhibitions you may be lucky enough to win a signed spot painting specially dedicated to you! Hmm...

Hirst on Spots:

I had an argument with an assistant who used to paint my spots. A fantastic argument. Because it's, like, nothing comes out of my studio unless I say it comes out of the studio. You've got loads of people working. You've got people you care about that you've known for long periods of time. When she was leaving, and she was nervous, she said, 'Well, I want a spot painting. I've painted loads for you. I've painted these spot paintings for a year, and I want one'. A year in the studio, getting paid a fiver, a tenner an hour, whatever it is. So I said, 'I'll give you a cheque for seventy thousand quid if you like. Why don't I just do that? Because you know you're going to sell it straight away. You know how to do it. Just make one of your own.' And she said, 'No. I want one of yours.' But the only difference between one painted by her and one of mine is the money.

[...]

I only ever made five spot paintings myself. Personally. I can paint spots. But when I started painting the spots I knew exactly where it was going. I knew exactly what was going to happen, and I couldn't be fucking arsed doing it. And I employed people. And my spots I painted are shite. They're shit. I did them on the wrong background, there's the pin-holes [from the compass] in the middle of the spots which at the time I said I wanted, because I wanted a kind of truth to it. Under close scrutiny, you can see the pocess by which they were made. They're shit compared to... The best person who ever painted spots for me was Rachel [Howard]. She's brilliant. Absolutely fucking brilliant. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

Hirst, Damien and Burn, Gordon (2001) On The Way to Work, London: Faber and Faber: "Interview 4: Outbuilding, Combe Martin, Monday, 30.08.09", pp82 and 90.

Jerry Saltz on Hirst's Spots:

Hirst's spot paintings are spiffy riffs on Sol Le Witt’s sixties formula: authorless paintings that can be made by anyone. Each one looks cheery, fresh, and modern. The grids are machinelike, the color lifelike—bingo, a brand. I wouldn’t mind owning a spot painting at all. Yet the idea of owning more than one is unimaginable. You see one, and you really have seen them all. (Read Spots and Sharks andMaggots and Money: How Damien Hirst took over the world, by Jerry Saltz)
Read review by Adrian Searle, watch TV interview with Charlie Rose.

Damien Hirst, Methoxyverapamil, 1991

Damien Hirst, 1-Bromododecane, 1996

Damien Hirst, DL-P-Chlorophenylalanine Methyl Ester, 1998

Damien Hirst, Bromchlorophenol Blue, 1996

Damien Hirst, Levorphanol, 1995

Damien Hirst, Spot Painting, 1986

Damien Hirst, Ethyl Laurate, 2003

Damien Hirst, Eucatropine, 2005

Damien Hirst, Cupric Nitrate, 2007

Damien Hirst with Spot paintings, Gagosian, 522 West 21st Street, NY