Eerily trendy art
At the London Gallery Weekend, the city's art dealers are once again up to date. The best shows open up rather gloomy prospects - but also give hope.
Questions in the museum
One of the best-visited galleries of the "London Gallery Weekend" last weekend, in which 126 galleries participated this time, was Sprüth Magers. Since 2007, the Cologne foundation has maintained an annex in an elegant townhouse in Mayfair. Visitors can visit until the 28th. June the detailed, large-format drawings of the Colombian-Korean artist Gala Porras-Kim from Los Angeles, which depict showcases in anthropological museums (40,000 to 120,000 dollars). The drawings are intended to encourage a rethinking of the performance of cultural artifacts – from artfully decorated Sorbian Easter eggs to Chinese porcelain – in museums.
News on Trump's deportations
Instead of lining up in a long line to see early sculptures by Antony Gormley during the Gallery Weekend in front of the clumsy construction of the White Cube Gallery in Mason's Yard, you could visit the intimate rooms of the Larkin Durey gallery, which opened last year, without waiting. It provides until the 27th. June works by the Los Angeles-based artist Massoud Hayoun, which deal with Trump's deportation policy under the heading "Stateless". Hayoun's Egyptian grandfather and his Tunisian grandmother are central figures in many of the surreal-looking paintings that deal with loss, love and resistance ($5,000 to $6000).
Growth in debris
Dill, spring onions, potatoes, mint and chamomile sprout from the charred beams of a Lithuanian country house, which have been processed into an installation. Vilnius-born artist Augustas Serapinas, born in 1990, designed his work "Potatoes and Chamomile" (potatoes and chamomile) especially for the Emalin Gallery in London. Their large window fronts give the view of the busy Shoreditch High Street and ensure that the rooms heat up like a greenhouse. Serapinas buys abandoned wooden houses in his post-socialist homeland. He converts their remains into a new cycle of growth: When the exhibition is on 26. July, he will cook a soup with the herbs according to an old family recipe. The potential buyer of the installation can have the modular work set up in his garden and planted (45,000 euros).
Mythical rubber creatures
You are put in a spooky mood with Kate MacGarry, who has been running her gallery on Old Nichol Street in Shoreditch for fifteen years. Roughly worked figures made of rubber by the London-based artist Francis Upritchard are there until 12. July in twilight. Many seem to be slowly melting away. Others, such as "The Shopper" (85,000 pounds), are reminiscent of the thin, stroading figures of Alberto Giacometti. Upritchard, who has twice represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale, employs mythological figures such as mermaids. If you buy one of their hard-to-keep sculptures, you will receive it in bronze.
From another fabric
The most interesting exhibitions are oaen found behind inconspicuous doors and at the end of narrow staircases: so is the show with works by the New York artist Rosemary Mayer, who died in 2014, which until 28. June in the windowless rooms of the Hollybush Gardens gallery. Included is the fabric sculpture "Scarecrow (model) for a field" (1978/79), which, with arms and legs made of sticks and with colorful fabrics, is reminiscent of a scarecrow as a medium of seasonal rites ($250,000). Three years ago, the Lenbachhaus in Munich organized one of its first institutional shows.
Guards on the wall
Many who are currently exhibiting in London galleries work with textiles or ceramics, including the Canadian artist Tau Lewis, born in 1993. Until 19. July, their giant heads of recycled fabric shreds - including white lace and golden brocade - hang like masks on the walls of the Sadie Coles gallery in the upscale neighborhood of St James's. The masks are intended to represent guardians who communicate with the forces of the underworld, inspired by the trajectory of the planet Venus and Sumerian mythology, ($65,000 to $95,000).
