Damien Hirst hits Prague

Until the end of August 2009, visitors to the Rudolfinum Gallery in Prague will have the opportunity to acquaint or reacquaint themselves, however fleetingly, with the work of the British artist Damien Hirst (b. 1965). Together the eleven exhibited works may only appear to represent a drop in the ocean that is Hirst’s seemingly infinite and unending output. Yet we should be pleased even for these, because none of his works have ever been shown in the Czech capital before.

Damien Hirst, a graduate of the prestigious Goldsmith’s College in London, became the main protagonist of the 90’s phenomenon labelled the ‘Young British Artists’ (YBAs). Following his success at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and his winning of the Turner Prize in 1995, his star has continued to rise to the superstar image he enjoys today. Hirst has innumerable supporters, as well as those critics who consider his international successes the result of a carefully calculated marketing campaign packaged with his superficially pleasing, sensation-seeking creations. Whatever the case may be, Damien Hirst is in a number of senses a unique phenomenon on the art scene.

All eleven works exhibited at the Rudolfinum come from a private museum; The Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. These represent a balanced cross section of his work from 1994 through to 2006, which introduces the visitor to the main formal as well as thematic aspects of the artist’s work. One of these is his fascination with death and (im)mortality, although this isn’t a trait particularly unique to him; we need think only of the mediaeval veneration of relics, or baroque mysticism.

Despite the fact that as regards the number of the works involved, the exhibition is significantly limited, it clearly demonstrates that Hirst is primarily a master of installation art, while his paintings often teeter on the brink of a kind of viewer-friendly decorativism. One need think only of the 353rd variant of the work Beautiful Amore, gasp eyes going into the top of the head and fluttering painting (1997) or Chloramphenicol Acetyltransferase (1996) commonly known as ‘spin and dots paintings’ (respectively), and the feeling that one is basically dealing with a well-marketed formalism is inescapable. But with his installations we do not encounter this sort of doubt, at least not with the works currently on display in Prague. The creators of the exhibition have not presented us with any of Hirst’s animals floating in formaldehyde, and in doing so demonstrate that he has much to offer us even with works that have received less media attention, both conceptually as well as in terms of visual impact. If only for the pieces Adam and Eve Exposed (2004) or The Martyrdom of St. Peter (2003), this Damien Hirst exhibition is worth seeing.

Damien Hirst: Life, Death and Love

curators: Gunnar B. Kvaran, Petr Nedoma

Rudolfinum (small gallery) , Prague, 21. 5. 2009 - 30. 8. 2009

www.galerierudolfinum.cz

Published in Flash Art, Vol. IV No 13-14, June - August 2009 (http://www.flashartonline.com/)

Revealing rituals & taboos

The Czech artist, Tereza Bušková (born 1978), completed her MA in 2007 at the Royal College of Art in London, where she concentrated mainly on printmaking and short experimental film. She attained acclaim early with her first film ‘Wedding Rituals’ (2007) at the Pärnu International Film & Video Festival in Estonia in the same year, and then again in Canada at the AGH's 10th International Film & Video Festival in 2008. In this and in her next film, ‘Forgotten Marriage’ (2008), she has examined the roles and hidden meanings of traditional rituals. These are presented to the viewer as poetic events, while nonetheless retaining much in terms of dark sexual connotations, thereby evoking questions regarding primeval gender roles. The stories are presented without a narrative framework, which enables the author to work very loosely with visual, and often almost theatrical effects reminiscent of Tableaux Vivants. Tereza Bušková’s films encourage a multilayered interpretation, and her setting up of these different yet parallel layers of meaning makes for very compelling viewing. Bušková’s most recent project, entitled ‘Spring Equinox’ has gained the support of the British Arts Council, and is to be exhibited from 9 July until 16 August 2009 in Anita Zabludowicz’s 176 Gallery in London.

http://www.terezabuskova.co.uk/

http://www.projectspace176.com/

Published in Flash Art, Vol. III No 11-12, March - May 2009 (http://www.flashartonline.com/)

The Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea

The eagerly anticipated opening of the new Saatchi Gallery finally took place at the beginning of October 2008 in Chelsea, London. The gallery, with its generous exhibition space of 70,000 sq ft is already the third in which world-renowned collector Charles Saatchi has displayed his collections of contemporary art.

In 1985, he opened his first gallery in the space that had previously housed a paint factory in St John’s Wood, North London. The core of the collection at that time was mainly comprised of a selection of the work of American artists; Donald Judd, Brice Marden, Richard Serra and Cindy Sherman among others. His exhibition of Cy Twombly for example, the artist’s first in Britain, is testament to the fact that Saatchi has repeatedly anticipated the times and the trends followed by institutions. In the early nineties, the collector turned his attention from American to British artists. It is undeniable that Saatchi stands at the beginning of the phenomenally successful career of Damien Hirst as well as the rest of the generation known as the Young British Artists (YBAs). Indeed it was with a retrospective exhibition of these artists’ work that he opened his new gallery in County Hall (the Greater London Council's former headquarters) on the South Bank of the Thames in 2003. The gallery was forced to move a mere two years later however, due to an unsuccessful legal battle with the owners of the space.

Saatchi’s new gallery in Duke of York's HQ on the King's Road opens with the exhibition “The Revolution Continues: New Art from China”. In thirteen halls it presents twenty four Chinese artists; all of whose works are from among the collector’s private acquisitions. These naturally include the names of the latest stars of the Chinese art world, like Zhang Xiaogang and Fang Lijun, also currently exhibiting in the Rudolfinum Gallery in Prague. Much of the heat is on artistic pair Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. On the ground floor these artists present us with 13 incredibly lifelike figures of old men wheeling about on wheelchairs, all uncannily reminiscent of world dictators from recent history. The wheelchairs move around apparently aimlessly in various directions, resulting them to repeatedly collide before moving on in different directions.

To summarise the nature of this exhibition (which in a few months, will be replaced by one of art from the Middle East) we can highlight the following: in the majority of cases we’re dealing with figurative artworks, ones that often carry a strong political or social message; the quality fluctuates (the presence of a weaker work sometimes surprises one by sticking out amongst the masterpieces); the sculpture represented has more in terms of innovation and imaginative creation than the paintings, which in some cases betray an almost forced attempt to consciously define themselves against the established western corpus that has so clearly influenced them. The transfer of the gallery to a wealthy area, and the firm place the Saatchi label now holds on the ‘map’ of the gallery establishment has perhaps inevitably led to a lessening of its onetime status as a benchmark of controversy. To seek here for the Saatchi of the 90’s would indeed be a futile undertaking.

Published in Art & Antiques, November 2008 (http://www.artantiques.cz/)