David zwirner

The hand is one of the first images to appear in art. There are handprints on the walls of caves in southern France, Indonesia and Argentina, made up to 50,000 years ago, which, although no doubt an illusion, seem to be waving at us across a vast gulf of time. The gigantic paintings of golden hands by Georg Baselitz at White Cube Mason’s Yard don’t quite do that, but the effect is still solemn and primeval. They dangle in front of you, fingers extended downwards, cut off at the wrist, each one the size of a whole body and glittering on a background of brownish black. There are also some

I’m in Mayfair and I’m boarding an airplane. Or rather, I’m boarding an approximation of an airplane. In the centre of Hauser & Wirth, there are airplane seats, organised into a formation that resembles a section of economy, and dislocated windows, hung on the walls where paintings might normally be. The seatbacks are stuffed, and a spring/summer 2012 edition of Sky Shop magazine is splayed across one of the seats. We are frozen in time and space. Like most of us in recent months, this plane — an installation by German artist Isa Genzken — isn’t going anywhere. It remains perpetually rooted. Its windows open on to white walls. The