Gallery run 15th September

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J B Blunk at Kate MacGarry with oriental ceramics.

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Kim Dorland at Beers London with images of forests, some figures aware of their impending death and a light-hearted egg motif.

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Richard Aldrich at Herald Street with a loose abstract piece.

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Christina Quarles at Pilar Corrias with abstracted figures in bright patterned landscapes.

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Moshekwa Langa at Blain Southern with great abstract works.

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Conrad Shawcross of Victoria Miro with developments on his tetrahedral motif.

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Urs Fischer at Gagosian. The candle is burning.

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Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) of Michael Werner Gallery with familiar animals that have become symbols.

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Keith Farquhar at Cabinet Gallery with familiar objects transformed for our viewing pleasure.

Gallery run 5th July

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Rosa Loy at The Approach with great German symbolic realism.

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Kasper Bosmans at The Approach with a small cosmic-looking painting. Fab piece.

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Brick Lane doorway. Love it, by the way!

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Collier Schorr of Stuart Shave Modern Art in a reclining pose for a selfie.

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Cosmic! Michelle Stuart at Alison Jacques Gallery with a grid made in 1969 and inspired by the moon.

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Keren Cytter of Pilar Corrias with imaginative use of reflective sheet that turns the gallery floor into a sort of makeshift projector screen helped by the intense spotlights coupled with dim over-lighting.

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Urs Fischer of Sadie Coles HQ with iPhone artworks showing the wit of the artist.

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Leonor Antunes at Marian Goodman Gallery with screens based on architectural and art motifs including those of Anni Albers.

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Juan Munoz of Frith Street Gallery with vividly drawn objects.

Gallery run 3rd May

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Julian Opie at Alan Cristea Gallery with the ubiquitous vinyl support now raised to the level of very good, high art.

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Helen Frankenthaler at Victoria Miro.

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Richard Serra of Gagosian with thickly covered sheets of paper, revealing uncovered edges built into the composition.

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Matthias Bitzer of Almine Rech Gallery with faces, mediating mathematical forms and his characteristic alternating light and dark bands of paint.

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John Chamberlain of Gagosian with posthumous artwork of crushed car parts shown in conjunction with his estate.

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Urs Fischer of Sadie Coles HQ with an emerging nude figure.

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Eric N Mack at Simon Lee Gallery with multi-media images and spaces.

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Karen Kilimnik of Sprueth Magers with small, vivid paintings. The effect of her imagination is clear from the explosion and bullet traces that have been frozen for the single moment of the composition.

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Spot the front door with letter box and street number 69, drawn onto this shelter along with the more obvious added brickwork.

Gallery run 6th December

My phone is being sorted out this morning leaving me temporarily camera-less. Nevertheless this hiatus is a chance to build up the jogging miles before my retrieving of the device and doing the gallery visits in quick succession. At Alison Jacques Gallery, Juergen Teller is displaying a series of photographs called Go-Sees. The title used here refers to the term in the fashion industry of an informal introduction between photographer and aspiring model. In this exhibition the models have crossed over from the fashion industry into art. They are shown posing in a frequently used doorway or against a familiar backdrop revealing, all the while, different levels of engagement with the camera. Some models are at the artist’s front door waiting to be let in and have been caught unexpectedly from above, whilst others have adopted contorted gymnastic poses thereby taking control of the photograph and demonstrating a power of their own.

A few streets away at Pilar Corrias Gallery, Mary Ramsden has exhibited abstract paintings with dynamic motifs. A swoosh of paint arcs over the canvas and at its apex, where the droplets can no longer hold together due to the force of the brush swerving in a new direction, a secondary ejection occurs. The droplets have broken free and splay out across the canvas. This arching swoosh is a gesture but also a symbol, since the artist appears to have reproduced it at will, not only in its general shape, but also in its dynamism, harnessing the forces of nature to eject the paint spray at the chosen point. Other details stand out too, though with less dynamism, such as a bright pink strip of paint up the outside of the stretcher frame. It is normally a dead space that carries only the residues and traces of the main action on the painting’s front surface, but here on this side strip the artist appears to have intervened amongst the various accidents.

Sadie Coles HQ provides two further spaces for today’s run. At Kingly Street, Kati Heck has produced a central hexagon structure in the centre of the main gallery. Six paintings are displayed on its inner walls forming a sort of panorama of images. The images themselves are very strong, comprising figures and various objects of symbolic importance, all boosted in their immediacy by the economy and panache of the brushstrokes. Some of the background colour actually appears to have been applied with decorating brushes, evidenced by the width of their strokes, whilst other areas are omitted altogether, suggesting a confidence and good judgement on the part of the artist. Arms are detached from hands, a piece of sky missing, but each such intervention is done with a plausible logic thereby keeping alive the interest for the viewer.

With the day rapidly passing, there is a chance to see some work at Phillips. Jonathan Meese has a large image that oozes German Expressionistic appeal. The tell-tale fragments of German vocabulary along with roughly rendered figures populating the picture space, create a distinct style and attractive image. Finally in Peckham a climbing frame with art aspirations of its own catches the eye. The steel with flaking blue paint looks great and its image on Instagram sits in the middle of the other eight like a sort of carousel.

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Juergen Teller at Alison Jacques Gallery who photographed aspiring models in informal settings called Go-Sees.

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Mary Ramsden of Pilar Corrias.

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Adriano Costa of Sadie Coles HQ.

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Urs Fischer at Sadie Coles HQ with prints and photos.

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John Armleder at Phillips.

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Mel Bochner at Phillips.

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Jonathan Meese at Phillips.

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Kati Heck at Sadie Coles HQ with very good figurative painting that isn’t too finished in places.

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Old frame in Peckham.

Gallery run 31st August

The first stop today is a Science Fiction Exhibition at the Barbican containing artwork from several artists at London galleries. On arrival, there is a sort of sensory overload of robots, clips from 60’s sci fi films and models of rockets destined for the moon. Many of these items are film props which were used in classics ranging from Star Wars to The Incredible Shrinking Man. The initial attraction for this show was the abundance of familiar gallery artists, but this is soon matched by the great postcard-sized paintings by Andrey Sokolov of moonscapes and yet more rockets.

At the Barbican a helpful attendant points the way up to Old Street after asking me If I was lost and what look likes a very pedestrian unfriendly car ramp turns out to be a short cut back to the main road. At Beers, Adam Lee is showing some evocative paintings inspired by the exotic location of his studio in an isolated region of Australia.

From here the Regent’s Canal provides a direct, though fairly long, route to Regent’s Park where there is a choice selection of sculptures. This is the Frieze Sculpture Park show and it is kicked off with a stunning sculpture by John Chamberlain set against a background of the park and some of the Regency properties on its periphery. Next Ugo Rondinone of Sadie Coles HQ presents an enormous white tree planted firmly into the grass. Tony Cragg has a sculpture with his stacked disc motif all assembled into a gold figure that has some similarities to the fantastical machines and figures on show earlier at the Barbican. Finally Takuro Kuwata of Alison Jacques Gallery has presented some brightly coloured cylindrical forms that look slightly organic like brightly coloured mushrooms, though of a different shape. Urs Fischer, meanwhile, has a skeleton placed in a fountain. It is being cooled, or watered in some way, with a garden hose. Then for me it’s back south with tired legs after having spent much of the last week with feet up on vacation.

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Postcards by Andrey Sokolov shown at Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction at The Barbican Centre.

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Storyboard for The Incredible Shrinking Man shown in the exhibition Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction at The Barbican Centre.

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Robot figure with light stick. Conrad Shawcross showing at Into the Unknown: A Journey Through Science Fiction at The Barbican Centre.

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Adam Lee at Beers London.

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John Chamberlain of Gagosian showing at the Frieze Sculpture Park in Regents Park.

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Ugo Rondinone at Frieze Sculpture Park in Regents Park.

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Tony Cragg at Frieze Sculpture Park in Regents Park.

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Takuro Kuwata of Alison Jacques Gallery at Frieze Sculpture Park in Regents Park.

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Urs Fischer of Gagosian in the Frieze Sculpture Park in RegentsPark.

Gallery run 8th February

West to East.

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Luiz Zerbini of Stephen Friedman Gallery with abstract motifs inserted into vivid naturalistic paintings.

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Anya Gallaccio of Thomas Dane Gallery with extruded clay building up a gallery-sized replica of a mountain in the US. A giant 3D printing process will be used to build the mountain up in layers with a honeycomb internal structure for strength but deliberately compromised by the chaotic nature of the wet clay.

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Fernanda Gomes of Alison Jacques Gallery with white objects of wood and canvas placed about the gallery.

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Florian Roithmayr of MOT International at Bloomberg Space with objects made from processes using basic materials.

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Urs Fischer of Sadie Coles HQ with an interactive Rodin replica whose plastacene material has been remodelled by the gallery visitors.

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Peter Halley at Stuart Shave Modern Art with 80’s paintings exploring communication and technology with simple but striking painted forms.

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Alex Israel and Bret Easton Ellis at Gagosian with text on painted film-style back drops.

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Team Lab of Pace Gallery with an immersive installation that recreates basic forces in nature such as the forces between water droplets, to create waterfalls, vortices, rivulets of water and other natural phenomena from their minute parts.

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Barbara Kasten at Thomas Dane Gallery with set-ups made from modern optically attractive materials.