Laura Gascoigne

I wish John Chamberlain was still around to crush this hideous toothpaste-blue Ferrari

Plus: watch shiitakes sprout and vases explode at Gagosian Britannia Street

‘Untitled’, c.1967, by John Chamberlain. Collection: Cy Twombly Foundation © 2020 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY 
issue 04 July 2020

For three months art lovers have had nothing but screens to look at. As one New York dealer complained to the Art Newspaper in May, ‘Everything is so flat — except for the curve,’ referring to the infection rate.

Flatness isn’t such a problem for paintings, which are flat anyway, or for digital media obviously. The art form that has suffered most from the lockdown is sculpture, since no 360˚navigation technology yet invented can replicate the experience of walking around a 3-D object. So it’s fortuitous that Gagosian is unlocking its three London spaces to a trio of new exhibitions of 3-D works, under wraps since March.

A woodcarving impregnated with mushroom spores promises to sprout shiitakes during the show’s run

Crushed, Cast, Constructed at Grosvenor Hill contrasts three approaches to sculpture in the works of John Chamberlain, Urs Fischer and Charles Ray. The main space is occupied by three of Fischer’s massive silvery forms moulded from small lumps of clay kneaded, squeezed and twisted in the hand, then scaled up 50 times for casting in aluminium.

Comments

Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months

Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.

Already a subscriber? Log in