Rosa Loy: ‘Volcano in the Garden’, 2013
One door closes another door opens… Although a number of meritorious small galleries have closed recently, there’s a new trend towards auction houses putting on curated exhibitions of selling art as if, in effect, they’re commercial galleries who don’t represent artists. Primary sites for this activity are Christies Mayfair, its former Haunch of Venison premises on New Bond Street, and the nearby S|2, opposite Sotheby’s auction rooms. S|2 has featured the Düsseldorf School of photography, and currently (to 23 May) presents ‘This Side of Paradise’, a survey of 16 European painters which focuses on slightly less famous artists from Leipzig (not Rauch but Baumgärtel, Eitel, Weischer…) and Cluj (not Ghenie but Bercea, Savu, Suciu…) as the current centres of a style said to be ‘simultaneously desiring to be in the thick of things’ and yet ‘criticise those who sustain them’. The highlight is at the German end: two new visions from Rosa Loy’s oneirically allegorical all-female world, including the masterly (mistressly?) Vulcano in the Garden. I love the fan and was unfazed by Sotheby’s spelling the title wrongly, and so calling Vulcan, god of fire, directly to mind. Christies has recently featured a huge, if ramshackle, collection of pop art, and has just pulled the plugs on ‘Turn Me On’, a very enjoyable survey of 50s-70’s kinetic art. That included Günther Uecker’s dancer – characteristically covered with nails, but with the fresh spin that they blur out of sharpness when the cheerful ballroom fetish starts to whirl around. Next up in May: Polke ft. Richter.
Günther Uecker: ‘New York Dancer’ (1966)
Most days art Critic Paul Carey-Kent spends hours on the train, traveling between his home in Southampton and his day job in Surrey. Could he, we asked, jot down whatever came into his head?
