Charles Saatchi is synonymous with the revival in British art in the 1990s. The collector introduced the world to Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst's shark. His Saatchi-style is a recognizable genre: it's visceral, figurative, sometimes shocking.
Today, the advertising executive opens his new gallery to reporters - after three years largely absent from the London exhibition scene.
The Saatchi Gallery on King's Road, Chelsea, formally opens on Oct. 9. It is a triumph, architecturally at least. The first exhibition, "The Revolution Continues: New Art from China" is exactly what we have come to expect from Saatchi shows. How much you like it will depend on your taste for bold imagery and old- fashioned figurative painting.
While much contemporary art is cool and cerebral, Saatchi favors subject matter that nobody could possibly mistake. A sculpture by Liu Wei, "Indigestion II," represents a pile of excrement two meters across. Wei's offering is undeniably - in fact inescapably - visceral. Saatchi-type art often is.
This, the third Saatchi gallery to date, is housed inside in the Duke of York's Headquarters, externally an imposing neoclassical building of 1801. Internally, this old military structure is now spare, elegant and minimalist. Imagine Tate Modern without that forbidding touch of austerity and menace.
The new building is an improvement in every way on Saatchi's previous premises in the Edwardian offices of County Hall. Those rooms, with their oak paneling and stopped municipal clocks, had a surreal charm but were a challenging environment in which to install art.
White Cube
The galleries mark a return to the "white cube" conception - now standard in contemporary spaces - which Saatchi himself introduced to London with his first institution two decades ago. Perhaps it was the success of the building that won me over - well, almost - to the work on display.
There have been a lot of shows of new Chinese art in recent years, and auction prices continue to rise stratospherically. Still, not much on view has been truly new in conception as opposed to geographical origin.
There is no new signature Chinese style or idiom. Instead, a range of diverse art is being made in the Far East by a legion of artists. From this, western curators tend to select the kind of thing they like anyway. Thus in 2006 the Serpentine Gallery presented a show, "China Power Station", that was almost entirely conceptual or video-based.
China Resemblance
Saatchi, on the other hand, has come up with Chinese artists closely resembling the ones he discovered in early 1990s Britain.
There are several oriental equivalents, for example, to Ron Mueck, the hyper-real sculptor whom Saatchi originally discovered.
Of course, everyone has influences, and you might argue that Hirst, Emin & Co. were often derivative themselves. Some of this Chinese Britart packs quite a punch.
Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's ``Old Folks Home'' fills a whole room with highly convincing images of old men, somewhat resembling world leaders, each seated in a wheel chair and colliding with each other like so many dodgem-cars. At first glance, you think a gallery tour of senior citizens has got trapped in the basement. That's the true Saatchi sensation, with no excessive concern about good taste.
But there's more to what he promotes and presents than simply shock. Over the years Charles Saatchi has proved himself a remarkable talent-spotter. His exhibitions are a valuable antidote to the - diametrically different - Tate-sponsored brand of contemporary art. It's good to have him back.
Source: Bloomberg
The Saatchi Gallery is at Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, Chelsea, SW3 4SQ and opens 9th October.
You can see more details regarding the latest exhibition on All In London here:
Saatchi Gallery Re-Opens
The All In London Blog
Posted Date
Oct 6, 2008 in The All In London Blog by All In London
Oct 6, 2008 in The All In London Blog by All In London