Jeff Koons - Newport Street Gallery

Jeff Koons, Balloon Swan

Jeff Koons: Now is at Newport Street Gallery until 16 October 2016.

 I like Jeff Koons. I shouldn’t really, but I do. Some of his work is horrible – Titi, for example (below); this is so kitsch that it makes you wonder what civilization has come to. Yet, even in its grotesqueness it exerts a sort of guilty, ironic pleasure.

On the other hand, I have seen a few of his ‘balloon’ pieces –  Dog, Flower – and they are… just fabulous, beautiful, joyous. They are ridiculous, to be sure, but wonderful in their immaculate, mirror-polished stainless steel, other-worldly, strangeness. I am looking forward to seeing Balloon Swan in this show.

I first saw Koons' work back in 1987 in Saatchi’s first (and best) gallery at Boundary Road in North London; even then I was both repelled and delighted. Art student Damien Hirst saw that exhibition too and was deeply impressed (see interview on Newsnight).  Today, Hirst, in addition to being a star artist in his own right not only has his own collection of Koons’ work, but his own gallery as well: Newport Street Gallery. (It looks to me as if some of the works from Saatchi’s collection have found their way into Hirst’s.) And what a terrific gallery it is, too. The first exhibition was the utterly delightful surprise of John Hoyland (see blog entry, below). Jeff Koons: Now is the second show and a more predictable subject than Hoyland, but no less welcome for that.

The exhibition amounts to a selected survey of Koons’ career from early ‘inflatables’ of 1979 through the wonderful vacuum cleaner pieces (The New) of the early 1980s, the basketball ‘Equilibium’ tanks, a model train whiskey decanter from the 'Luxury & Degradation' series (great title!), a selection of the exuberantly pornographic ‘Made in Heaven’ pictures of Koons and his former wife La Cicciolina, exploring their sexual love. (In fact Koons has explained that pornography “has no interest for me. I’m interested in love… I’m interested in the spiritual… I had to go to the depths of my own sexuality, my own morality, to be able to remove guilt and shame from myself. All of this has been removed for the viewer. So when the viewer sees it, they are in the Realm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.” (Muthesius, A. (1992) Jeff Koons, Taschen pp132/6) So, there you have it. He talks a lot of nonsense, but can be puppyishly plausible. (You can glimpse Exaltation (1991) from this series behind Bowl with Eggs (Pink), below.)

Read reviews/articles by Waldemar Januszczak, Fisun Güner, Mark Hudson and Jonathan Jones (he hated it: he says I am an idiot for looking at the vacuum cleaners, let alone liking them!); watch an interview (or love-in) with Koons and Hirst on BBC Newsnight (starts at 29 mins.); read an interview in the Evening Standard.
(Click on images to enlarge.)

Jeff, Koons, New Hoover Quik Broom, New Hoover Celebrity IV

Jeff Koons, Three Ball 50/50 Tank (detail)

Jeff Koons, Jim Beam - J.B. Turner Engine

Jeff Koons, Bowl with Eggs (Pink), (Exaltation in background)

Jeff Koons, Titi

Jeff Koons, Elephant

Jeff Koons, Play-Doh

George Shaw - The National Gallery

George Shaw, Study for Hanging Around (Landscape without Figures), 2014

George Shaw: My Back to Nature is at the National Gallery until 30 October 2016.

I have long been a fan of George Shaw’s Humbrol Enamel paintings of the decayed, depressed post-war housing estate of Coventry, where he grew up – Adrian Searle nicely described his work as a miserabilist suburban sort of metaphysical painting. Shaw was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2011 (see below); now, since 2014, he has been the latest Associate Artist in the National Gallery; The appointment is by invitation and is for a period of two years. The artist is given a studio in which to make new work that in some way connects to the National Gallery Collection. It is designed to demonstrate the continuing inspiration of the Old Master tradition on today's artists.

Shaw’s work includes 14 drawings of himself, naked, in poses that are studies of masterpieces in the National Gallery. But the main event is a series of paintings which take their cues from Titian, Breughel and Poussin and which have shifted the artist’s focus away from Tile Hill (the Coventry housing estate which has been his obsessive subject) to nature; or, at least, to the wooded areas on the outskirts of that estate where discarded mattresses and magazines become a feature of the landscape.

Read reviews by Laura Cumming (she describes the show as ‘riveting’), Waldemar Januszczak,  Alastair Smart and Jonathan Jones. Watch a short video: George Shaw: In the Woods, in which the artist talks about the subject material for his new paintings – the ‘suburban nature’, the ‘other world’ of the wooded land a few hundred yards away from the housing estates where, take away containers, soft-drink cans, beer cans, crisp packets, condoms… mark its character and use. 
Read A Q&A with George Shaw... painter. Read an interview from 2011 with Sean O'Hagan.

George Shaw, The Sadness of the Middle-Aged Life Model, 2015

George Shaw, The School of Love

George Shaw, the Foot of a Tree, 2015-16

George Shaw, Every Brushstroke is Torn out of my Body

George Shaw, Natural Selection, 2015-16

George Shaw, Natural Selection, 2015-16 (detail)

George Shaw, the Call of Nature

George Shaw, The Rude Screen

George Shaw,  My Back to Nature - installation view, National Gallery

Mona Hatoum - Tate Modern

Mona Hatoum, The Light at the End, 1989

Mona Hatoum is at Tate Modern until 21 August 2016.
I first saw a work by Mona Hatoum at “The British Art Show 1990” (26 years ago!) and was deeply impressed. The piece was The Light at the End (1989) which comprised a metal frame closing off a claustrophobic, red-lit, tunnel like space: the frame was vertically strung with glowing electric elements radiating considerable heat. Visually the piece brilliantly combined the seductive, elegant Minimalism of, say, a Dan Flavin light sculpture with a contradictory, palpable danger and threat. 
Although Light at the End does not appear to be included in the Tate's restrospective there is plenty of work here which subtly combines pleasure and threat - a preoccupation which derives from Hatoum's background: she was born to Palestinian parents in Beirut and exiled when civil war broke out in Lebanon while she was visiting London in 1975.  
Homebound (2000) comprises a tableau of domestic furniture and items – tables, chairs, a cot, kitchen utensils – through which an electric current surges, simultaneously lighting them and turning them lethal; Light Sentence (1992) comprises wire mesh cages illuminated by a single bulb which throws sinister shadows on to the walls. Powerful stuff: a show not to be missed.
Read reviews by Adrian Searle, Laura Cumming, Waldemar Januszczak, Mark Hudson, Rachel Spence; read a feature by Philippe Dagen relating to this exhibition's previous showing at Centre Pompidou; read a profile feature by Rachel Cooke which refers to some of Hatoum's early performance work including Under Siege (1982) during which for seven hours Hatoum appeared naked, covered in clay, and trapped inside a huge transparent container... Again and again, she would try to stand up; again and again, she would fail. As the day wore on, the tank’s walls grew dirty, smeared with marks left by her muddy hands and body, her cheeks, her lips.
(Click on images to enlarge.)

Mona Hatoum, Under Siege, 1982

Mona Hatoum, Light Sentence, 1992

Mona Hatoum, Homebound, 2000

Mona Hatoum, Undercurrent (red), 2008 (detail)

Mona Hatoum, Grater Divide, 2002

Mona Hatoum, Cellules, 2012-13 (detail)

Mona Hatoum, Hot Spot III, 2009

Mona Hatoum, Impenetrable, 2009