Perrotin, Claridge’s, Brook’s Mews, London W1K 4HR
www.perrotin.com Instagram: @perrotin
Emmanuel Perrotin famously founded his original Paris gallery in 1990 at the age of just twenty-one. Five years later his profile was raised unusually when Maurizio Cattelan dressed him provocatively in a bunny-come-cock costume for the exhibition ‘Errotin the true rabbit’. Lapine or not, he now has three galleries covering 3,000 sq. m in Paris, and an international presence in Hong Kong, New York, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Dubai – and London, also with a substantial bookstore.
Nine months ago, Perrotin took over the large space beneath Claridge’s Hotel, which had previously acted as a gallery on a more occasional basis – most notably to enable expanded exhibitions by the nearby Ben Brown. The current show – Perrotin’s third in the space – is an impressively-staged overview of Laurent Grasso through painting, film, sculpture and light – one of the more familiar French artists for London audiences, given that Sean Kelly featured him in in the recent Frieze fair and he showed imaginatively with Olivier Malingue in 2017. The future programme will have more local input, following the recent appointment of Rowena Chiu, familiar to me from other galleries such as Stephen Friedman, as the London Director. Perrotin represents 74 artists and estates, and he describes his tastes as ‘consistently eclectic’ – and that runs to cross-overs with fashion, design, music and street art. My bucket list for gallery artists I would like to see here would be headed by Bernard Frize, Wim Delvoye, Paola Pivi, Vivian Greven and Gelitin, which may give a flavour of the variety in prospect.
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.
