- Venue
- Pace
- Location
- London
Commercial galleries are increasingly putting on shows to rival public museums and galleries. Think of Gagosian’s Picasso show a few years ago, Blain Southern’s retrospective of Lucian Freud’s drawings last year, or even Pace’s recent Rothko/Sugimoto show. The scale of the shows may be smaller, but the quality can often rival that of a much larger show.
Pace have done it again with their current retrospective of Alexander Calder’s work made after 1945. Mobiles, standing mobiles, small maquettes and much less familiar gouaches and watercolours all feature in this charming show.
The mobiles in particular are enhanced by the use of circular white plinths which delineate the space each piece or group of pieces occupies. They have the added benefit of allowing the cast shadows to be seen more clearly, which I cannot help feeling are an integral part of some of the pieces.
The arrangement of the gallery as a whole is echoed in the piece Snow Flurry, a delicate array of white discs. Scarlet Digitals is rightly given pride of place. One of the most complex pieces – a mixture of floating horizontals, bold red uprights and a spray of small orange forms – each distinct group is balanced by the others as they drift slowly around one another. Calder usually employs abstract forms, however biomorphic, but Tentacles is highly suggestive of a creature you might not wish to get close to.
Bright colour is used sparingly, sometimes restrained to very small discs of primaries within a grouping predominantly black. The wires that connect each form are often as thin as possible, but their elegantly flowing lines and curves still feel that way when formed from relatively thick black wire, perhaps because they feel part of the overall rhythm of a piece.
The works are given room to breathe, and an absence of interpretive clutter means each piece is allowed to speak for itself. Some of them are deeply eloquent of feelings of grace, calm and contemplation.
The paintings in the smaller upstairs gallery are redolent of Miro and there’s a strong sense that Calder was much more in his element when working with metal plate and wire than he was with paint. One 1946 gouache does arrest the attention for containing a figure starkly reminiscent of some of Antony Gormley’s more stripped down sculptures.
Altogether this show is a real pleasure and a highlight of current exhibitions in London.
