- Venue
- Saatchi Gallery
- Location
- London
So I know I’m a bit late in the game, but as I was in London learning how to stop people stealing my ideas, I thought it only prudent to attend the New Saatchi Gallery as well. It’s been a while since my last visit to London; I have vague memories of wandering, lost on my way to an open day at the RCA, stumbling past the Duke of York’s HQ mid-renovation and thinking to myself ‘I really should go there when it’s finished.’ So today seemed as good a day as any to make good on my intentions, unfortunately my navigation skills haven’t improved much.
After a rather longer than expected tour of Chelsea, the first thing that hit me about this place was the sheer scale of it. As plain white gallery spaces go, this is up there with the best of them, and I have to say the lighting especially is impressive. However the thing that worried me the most about this is the fact that this is what I was thinking in the first gallery space. It occurred to me after a few minutes looking around at the high ceilings and wooden floors that there is actually art in the room too.
Not much of it in fairness, in fact that seems to be a trend for the whole exhibition. I’m sure there’s some curatorial argument about each work needing it’s ‘own space,’ but it does seem slightly like Saatchi brought too few paintings back from his expedition to China and just spread them out on the wall a bit to make up the space. Still, saying that it does allow for a good appreciation of each image individually, and what sculptural works there are have a reasonable space around them to give you a good look at them from all angles.
The first works that really catches my eye Zhang Huan’s ‘Seeds’ and ‘Young Mother.’ These huge yet subtle works have a great textural and ephemeral quality, created in part by the limited tonal usage, lending a dark, almost sinister atmosphere to the pieces, and the wonderful grain and tactile quality created through the use of ash on the canvas. The composition creates a slight sense of voyeurism in the works, especially ‘Young Mother,’ which with the subjects expression, pose and lack of clothing has some worryingly menacing overtones. Lingering on this image I begin to wonder ‘Who is this woman?’ ‘What is she posing for?’ ‘Is she there of her own volition?’
Onto the third gallery, which is also notably sparse, and like a moth to a flame I am drawn to Zhan Wang’s ‘Ornamental Rock No. 71.’ An interesting abstract form materially reminiscent of works of Kapoor or Koons, but which also bizarrely brings to mind Umberto Boccioni’s ‘Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.’ Despite its bulk and obvious weight there is a certain fluidity to the piece, a sense of movement, progression. The direction of this movement is however extremely uncertain. Were this by a western artist I would suggest perhaps this work is meant as a question of the direction of contemporary society. A metaphor for the loss of clear direction that was present in the modern era. A sign that society is still moving, but in a far more convoluted manner, but somehow I doubt such concerns are really relevant to the society which spawned this work.
The walls surrounding Wang’s form present paintings by Zhang Xiaogang, and like Huan’s ‘Young Mother’ there is definitely a sinister edge to these pieces as well. The blank expressions of the people depicted, along with the sparse use of colour, give the works an oppressive feel. I’m no politics expert, but the characters in these works do seem to portray a passive acceptance to a dominant force, perhaps an allusion to the Chinese Socialist state.
Through the next room there’s a few weirder sculptures, most notably Zhang Huan’s ‘Donkey,’ although it didn’t seem to do much ‘humping’ while I was there. Cang Xin’s ‘Communication,’ also offered some comic relief from the general air of seriousness enveloping the gallery, but this wasn’t really anything different to what you would have seen in the old Saatchi gallery with the works of Duane Hanson, and not a patch on Jan Fabre’s ‘Je me vide de moi-même,’ at interrogating the gallery space.
The paintings of Shi Xinning, offered a good combination of wit and political substance. Technically Xinning’s painterly style isn’t anything special but the inclusion of Chairman Mao in a range of recent historical situations is both amusing and a fantastic comment on how China may have been politically overlooked over the previous century. These works were juxtaposed well with Zeng Fanzhi’s oils on canvas, their bold bright colours and Fanzhi’s almost sculptural approach to the painted canvas, carving another image into the paint over the top of the original composition, was a refreshing lift from the mediocrity of some of the other works around.
One trend that was becoming apparent as I continued round the second floor of the gallery was the similarity between a large proportion of these works and greats from the ‘Saatchi canon,’ and other western artists. None of these was more obvious than Sun Yuan and Peng Ya’s ‘Angel.’ The comparison between this work and that of Ron Mueck is unavoidable. The perfect replication of hair, skin, and bodily form however unoriginal was still impressive, while the stark, candid depiction of such a religious emblem arguably presents a more realistic depiction of such a creature than religious prose would have us imagine.
From here the exhibition became more a game of ‘spot the similarities,’ Zhang Dali’s hanging figures evoking the feeling of Louise Bourgeois, Shen Shaomin’s fantastical skeletons a poor alternative to Hyungkoo Lee’s witty and humourous ‘Animatus.’ Not to mention a wealth of none-descript paintings that, except for the odd mandarin symbol or more Oriental looking subject, could easily be from anywhere.
For me this was the exhibitions ultimate downfall. With a culture as rich and diverse as China’s I assumed, and in all honesty I wanted the work displayed here to be something different. I find it worrying that out of cultures as opposed as China’s and our own that such similar work is being produced. Don’t get me wrong some of the work here is impressive, subtle and original, but far too much of it is just the same old story. This is particularly depressing as there is the very beginning of an interesting psychological subtext to these works, one of state oppression and control, which could have been explored with much greater success and careful curating.
For me though the most pertinent question that needs to be answered after seeing this show is: what is this exhibitions legacy? Is this exhibition just a sign of Charles Saatchi’s artistic interests, a testament to his perseverance in finding artwork in a different culture that satisfies his taste? Or is it, more worryingly, a true sign of the post-modernist affirmation that ‘everything’s already been done?’ Is this show just a small unrepresentative sample of Chinese art, or is it actually a sign that despite evolving in near complete isolation from each other for such a long period of time, contemporary Western art and contemporary Chinese art have somehow managed to develop to near identical points? I’m not sure I have an answer, but it will definitely be interesting to see whether the next exhibition at the gallery ‘New art from the Middle East’ brings us closer to one.
