Pilar Corrias will open a second London gallery space at 2 Savile Row on 8th July 2021. Designed by London and Oslo-based Hesselbrand, the gallery will launch with an inaugural exhibition by Tala Madani (b. 1981, Tehran). ‘Chalk Mark’ will showcase new paintings by the Iranian-American artist, running until 8th September 2021.
‘Chalk Mark’ will bring together new works by Madani exploring education and instruction. They include a series of Chalk Board paintings that engage with the role of copying and repetition in learning, via repeated motifs that are deliberately undisciplined and unruly. Children are depicted as accosted by education, with one painting showing a line of lilliputian figures entering the mouth of a prone adult male. A line of graduates exits from his back passage. Unidentified officers will appear repeatedly in the exhibition, symbols of enforcement, conformity and control. In a perversion of this dynamic, one painting shows a child drawing a policeman. In another, the child drawing the policemen has become a drawing himself. Another shows miniature children on magic carpets flying toward a pair of floor fans.
Madani is known for work that deconstructs and satirises social norms. Early works focused on farcical male figures engaged in crude or intimate activities. Recent years have seen female figures appear in her work, as well as those of children, and all her work is characterised by an uncomfortable comedy that aligns repulsion with empathy, intimacy with the grotesque. ‘Chalk Mark’ coincides with the final days of ‘Tala Madani: Skid Mark’ at the Eastcastle Street Gallery until 10th July. Together they constitute Madani’s first solo presentation in the UK in five years.
2 Savile Row
The 1,200-square-foot, street-level gallery has been designed by London and Oslo-based architects Hesselbrand. It is situated in a former townhouse built in the 1730s as part of the development of the Burlington Estate. The house’s first leaseholder was the eminent architect and designer William Kent. Hesselbrand’s design speaks to the original character of 18th-century London townhouses – residences whose ground floor spaces were part of the public life of the city – and they have created a soft boundary between the gallery and the street. A skylit atrium is the focal point at the far end of the space. Pilar Corrias opened on Eastcastle Street in 2008. Since its inception, the gallery has worked with emerging and established international artists, including Ian Cheng, Shara Hughes, Philippe Parreno, Christina Quarles, Rachel Rose, Tschabalala Self and Rirkrit Tiravanija. Pilar Corrias now represents a total of 30 international artists, two-thirds of whom are female.
Pilar Corrias 54 Eastcastle Street London W1W 8EF
& 2 Savile Row London W1S 3PA www.pilarcorrias.com
