David Altmejd, The New North (2007).© David Altmejd, courtesy Saatchi Gallery
An appraisal of contemporary sculpture is currently on display at London’s Saatchi gallery, featuring pieces from 20 leading and emerging international artists. This is the first time the spaces have been devoted entirely to three-dimensional work, from neon structures and buckled cars to granite monoliths.
The breadth of the medium is demonstrated by approaches utilising a wide array of materials, including found objects, urethane, clay, copper sulphate, fabric, and even dirt. However, thrusting sculpture into the limelight comes at the expense of the capricious diversity of previous exhibitions such as Abstract America: New Painting and Sculpture during 2009.
There are still striking pieces, including The New North by David Altmejd, a large scale anthropomorphic figure cast in a state of metamorphosis. Microcosmic worlds are held within its gouged hollows, as caverns drip with stalactites and quartz crystals. A diminutive and mirrored spiralling staircase is a portal to the innermost cavities, but as it winds aloft it eats into the flesh like a delicate yet suffocating vine.
Other artists have employed more unorthodox materials, such as Peter Buggenhout’s constructions from household dust and Berlinde De Bruyckere’s use of horse skin. The former pieces have an intriguingly intricate structure, with the texture naturally evoking decomposition, disintegration and decay.
The latter creations, entitled K21 and K36 (The Black Horse), make for a far more nauseating viewing experience. In each, the whole of a lustrous horse skin is stretched over an iron cast of an unnaturally arranged horse carcass.
David Batchelor breathes new life into hitherto banal objects in his alluring sculptural installations, with the intention to “make the viewer see them a little differently – see them as colours before seeing them as objects”. His success is evident in Parapillar 7, which at first simply radiates colour, until examination exposes the components’ domesticity as hair brushes, fly swats, sieves, feather dusters and rulers can all be identified.
An earlier piece, Brick Lane Remix I, is composed of office-like shelving units stacked with impromptu light boxes which glow with warmth.
The highlight of the exhibition is on the top floor – a seemingly infinite wood and light assemblage by Björn Dahlem. Entitled The Milky Way, it evokes its title subject without claiming to be to scale, useful, or even correct. This does not diminish its celestial radiance.
The pared-down aesthetic and open structure create a weightless quality, while the illumination of the neon tubes reflects back from the gallery walls, infusing the space.
- Open 10am-6pm. Admission free.
