Lehmann Maupin, 1 Cromwell Place, South Kensington, London SW7 2JE
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Cromwell Place is well worth a visit: close by South Kensington tube (and also Purdy Hicks, as recently featured) it typically has half a dozen or so exhibitions on view in a varied and generally worthwhile programme. Mostly that is presented by galleries who hire space on a subscription basis. I recall, for example, impressive shows from Tiwani Contemporary (pending a forthcoming move into Cork Street), Ione & Mann, Sundaram Tagore, New Normal Projects, Selma Feriani, Canopy Collections and Jack Bell Gallery.
Lehmann Maupin, though, has had a permanent presence since October 2020, when Cromwell Place became the London location of the gallery founded by Rachel Lehmann and David Maupin in New York in 1996 – since when it’s also opened in Hong Kong and Seoul. Nicholas Hlobo, Alex Prager, Cecilia Vicuña and a group show of ‘Body Topographies’ have been highlights since then. The current show is actually the first London solo from an artist I’ve followed for a long time: Klara Kristalova, who was born in the former Czechoslovakia but moved to Sweden aged one. ‘The Cold Wind and the Warm’ includes the figurative ceramic sculptures for which she is best known – typically merging human and natural in surprising ways – but also works on paper that operate with comparable appeal. The title work turns colour into temperature with economical wit.
London’s gallery scene is varied, from small artist-run spaces to major institutions and everything in between. Each week, art writer and curator Paul Carey-Kent gives a personal view of a space worth visiting.
