ArtHeat

So, here we all are again. This week the town drunk was invited to a private view at the White Cube - for those who don’t know (where have you been?), it’s Jay Joplin(husband to Sam Taylor-Wood)’s smantzy pantzy gallery in super-trendy ‘see and be seen’ Hoxton Square, London. Yes, it does sound cool but actually it’s rather easier to achieve than you would imagine, I just signed up to the mailing list on their website…fair play to them though, they addressed my invite , “Dear town drunk…” !!!
The show, called “Dark Matter” was probably one of the weirdest I’ve ever been to. The works were each by a different artist, produced in different eras and parts of the world and for completely different reasons. Why had they all been curated together? Simple, they were all black. That’s right, sorry Michael Jackson but it seems black is the new white! (Oh God I can’t wait to read the comments now….please don’t anybody get offended by that- except maybe Mr Jackson) .This is what the White Cube said about their exhibition, “…The black monochrome has…engendered a paradoxical history as arguably a ‘last painting’, a zero point beyond which painting could not go, suggesting painting as an object instead of a window onto another space. And yet it was also experienced as a negative icon…” Mmmmmmmm……I don’t know if they really explored that successfully, but I have to say, despite the zillions of trendy people mooching about in there, the works did have a powerful emotional effect on me, and -just so you know I’m human- some of them did make me laugh out loud at the pretentiousness of it all (which didn‘t seem to go down as well as you‘d think).

The artists on the show were; Art and Language, Katharina Fitsch (bit scary), Felix Gonzalez Torres(I happily walked off with a piece of his ‘party platform’), Mark Grotjahn, Damien Hirst (flies this time-no cattle or fish…maybe he’ll do a deer next),Gary Hume(sumptiuous shiny black doors), Ellsworth Kelly, Damian Ortega, Ad Reinhardt (really the star of the show), Richard Serra (unexpectedly a painting), Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gavin Turk (it’s nice to see that Jay Joplin has a bronze-cast sense of self parody!), Andy Warhol (three guesses which actress), and Cerith Wyn Evans(fantastic black neons). It was all neatly presented in a lovely hard back catalogue, for the princely sum of-cough- £20.
Anyway, in the true spirit of Artheat I did try to spot famous people, I think I saw Damien Hirst running away before it all got started-a very ugly man, and it’s possible that Jay himself was the man in a suit who welcomed me in…Sam wasn’t there, but then she is up the duff and it’s very hot in London at the moment…otherwise, well, as a drunk it’s easy to get side tracked you know…I’m posting a couple of photos of the crowds (don’t get jealous Brendan BR) so you can all see if you can spot anybody for yourself… don't squint, click on them...