Exhibition Review: London Gallery Weekend
Herbert List Greece, Athens, 1936. Young man with laurel over the eyes © Herbert List / Magnum Photos.
Written by: Claire Ping
Taking place from June 4-6, the inaugural edition of London Gallery Weekend brings together over 130 contemporary art galleries to offer a chance of reunion with culture and creativity for the city’s art-thirsty crowd. The newly established event takes an innovative approach of grouping its participants by geographical area, a salute to the fact that art spaces are dispersed across several hubs in the UK capital. Each day will focus on one specific zone – Central London on Friday, South London on Saturday, and the East End on Sunday.
For those with an eye for photography, a destination not to be missed is The Magnum Gallery. During the weekend and beyond, the space presents Herbert List: Metamorphoses – an exhibition of works by the German photographer who is recognized as an avant la lettre queer artist. Featuring black and white photographs taken in 1933 to 1958, Metamorphoses explores mythology, the male body, and Greek sculpture. It attempts to delineate the complex crossings between List’s prolific images of sculptures and his portrayals of men. The show takes its title from Ovid’s epic poem, which narrates the myths of Apollo and Daphne, Echo and Narcissus, and the Minotaur. These tales, in turn, form underlying themes in List’s highly sensual and engaging photographs of friends and lovers.
ROBIN RHODE Proteus, 2020 (detail) C-print. 6 parts, 43.39 x 89.68 inches (framed overall) 110.2 x 227.8 cm
Meanwhile, the Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist Robin Rhode is the subject of an exhibition at Lehmann Maupin. As its title suggests, The Backyard is My World focuses on photographs and animations created over the last ten years in the backyard of Rhode’s family home in Johannesburg, South Africa. In these works, the artist imaginatively transforms concrete walls and ground from a flat, monochrome visual plane into a three-dimensional space activated through the presence of performers, found objects, and site-specific drawings. In Proteus, a new piece that also references Greek mythology by adopting its name from the protector of seas and rivers, this space is made to evoke a body of water with a diver at its center and a green hose to represent waves. The show both revisits Rhode’s practice in the past decade and draws from a year of confinement during which the artist has been able to contemplate on memories and inspirations sparked by the retreat to his childhood safe-haven.
Fiona Ones, Beirut, 2020, Archival print on Hahnemuhle paper, 64 x 45 cm © Artist, A.I.
The spotlight shifts to emerging artists at A.I., a gallery platform with spaces in Cromwell Place and Tenter Ground. On the occasion of LGW, A.I. hosts a solo exhibition on Fiona Ones. Do Not Name a Feeling includes new works by the artist, whose practice investigates parallels between photography and drawing. Interested in the shifting boundaries of the photographic medium, Ones employs experimental techniques to explore engagement with surface, light, and the sense of an invisible “apparatus” – be it a camera, a pen, or a needle.
© ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2021 Photo © Archives Fondation Dubuffet, Paris.
Photo: Jacques Faujour
A slightly different experience is found at Pace Gallery, where a rare capsule performance of two characters from Jean Dubuffet’s Coucou Bazar will happen out on the street. The piece is an ambitious realization of the artist’s vision for a living painting animated through a mixture of choreography, music, architecture, and more. Three performances are scheduled for Friday.
Visit the London Gallery Weekend website for “Curated Routes” mapped out by art world insiders: https://londongalleryweekend.art/curated-routes/
