Yesterday I went to London to see some shows. Matisse at Tate Modern, Marvin Gaye Chetwyind at Sadie Coles HQ, Pangea: New art from Africa and Latin America at Saatchi Gallery and Dieter Roth, Arnulf Rainer – Collaborations at Hauser & Wirth.
I haven’t got much time to write in depth so I’m going to be quick on this… ( I SHOULD BE DOING MY DISSERTATION DRAFT!!! DUE THIS TUESDAY!)
I didn’t like (much) Marvin Gaye Chetwynd show. I also needed a wee desperately so I kind of wondered around Sadie Coles doing some funny-crossing-my- legs-dance whilst at the same time trying to analyse the show. Black and white prints all over the place in different sizes on the first floor with a kind of booth/bus/cave thing for drawing, maybe for children? with some catalogues on top of it in the middle of the room. The whole show felt claustrophobic and I didn’t know how I was meant to feel. Marvin succesfully changed the whole feeling of the gallery, there wasn’t anymore a white pristine gallery in there but some messy kind of room or artist studio wallpapered with some crazy imagery and text. This room combine references to Medieval churches and Baroque ornamentation with the absurdist jolts and bodily anagrams of Surrealist collage. I enjoyed the Bat Opera paintings, crazy little paintings with “bats” in some paintings flyng accross different landscapes or spreading wings… I found them quite fascinating and quite different. The fact she has chosen bats as a subjet creates something already dark and mysterious in there. Overall I like Chetwyin, I really do, her performances, her handmade work, her spontaneity and arte povera influences tick the box to me, but this show… mmmm I wasn’t too impressed.
Matisse, oh Henri Matisse. It was worth to wait 4 hours to see your work. You mastered colours like no one, so much cut outs, all different and at the same time identical. The exotic feel to these works, your Haiti visit inspirations, the vibrancy and the energy of your work is really empowering. Your boldness in the use of intense, unmodulated colour it feels just right to me. Your work feels to me like a carnival, like Summer, like the sun shinning, like exotic islands, like tropical flora and fauna. I could live in your compositions FOREVER. My work is influenced by painters like you, fauvist and expressionist artists. Thank you for having been there for future artists generations.
Dieter Roth, Arnulf Rainer – Collaborations at Hauser & Wirth was good enough and worth the visit. Quite a lot of chaotic scribbles framed around the gallery, a creative fight or challenge set by these two artists working together is these drawings. I can feel a lot of fustration, rage and specially raw energy in the works. A necessity to express wildly. An envy for life I think. Like in the work of Matisse, a mad repetition of forms and colours mirroring the cycles of life and a passion for living life like if tomorrow didn’t exist. The passionate artist, absorbing life, re-calculating and re-evaluating, and just feeling it and making art about it, because without art, life doesn’t make SENSE and this is reflected in those works. Only on my personal view of course.
Pangea: New art from Africa and Latin America at Saatchi Gallery= Overall okay, two pieces made an impact on me. Rafael Gómezbarros’s, Casa Tomada, amazing is his work, really cool, never seen anything like it. So simple and striking really. A piece of work that you have to experience in situ. I wish I could see this work from a child’s eye, that must be even more crazy. Massive ants everywhere occupying a room. It felt like a film set for a horror movie, but you realise that they are not real, of course they are not, however my imagination had a go and played with this work. I specially liked the amazed expression on people’s eyes entering the room, and emotions such as doubtfulness, wareness, scepticism, disgust and wonder. The other work is by Ibrahim Mahama, Untitled, 2013 a draped jute sacks wall installation. Very theatrical with a lot of heavy connotations with decay, death, hard labour, war, ageing. It was majestical. I wish I could have spend more time in that room.
I should now end this here and start with my draft. The clock is now looking at me worriying… I should now do my homework.
:/
