'The Revolution Continues': The opening of the new Saatchi Gallery

'The Revolution Continues': The opening of the new Saatchi Gallery

07 October, 2008
by: Tom Jeffreys

And it's here at last. The Saatchi Gallery – one of the most eagerly anticipated additions to the London art scene – has finally plonked its bad self down in the newly refurbished Duke of York's Headquarters near Sloane Square. At four floors and about 70,000 square-foot, this is comfortably the gallery's largest home to date. I popped down a couple of days before the official opening to check it out, with two main questions in my head: 'how would the new space shape up?' and 'why China?'

The answer to this first question is, in a word, brilliantly. The building is big and grandly pillared, white and stately, with, charmingly, a grass play area out front. On the day I visit, there's a group of school kids kicking a football on it and, I think, in a way, this sums up the aims of this new Saatchi Gallery. Of course, Charles Saatchi is a very rich man with a very important art collection and a penchant for the new and the shocking. But thanks to corporate sponsorship from Phillips de Pury & Company, entrance is completely free. So anybody can visit, see, learn, and be provoked.

Also, interestingly, there are no cordons around any of the works. On the day I visited the gallery I'd just come back from Paris and been irritated by the distance that one is forced to keep from the works on display at the Louvre. No such limitations here. 'Do not touch' still stands of course – this is extremely valuable stuff on show – but the atmosphere is one of family friendliness. 'All for art and art for all' or something.

But, why China? Well, we all know – Olympics, economy, population boom etc – that China is well on the way to becoming the next big super-power. But is its output of contemporary art as important as its growing economic might? Judging from this show, yes. And no.

Let's begin negatively. A lot of contemporary Chinese art consists of crass political commentary: attacks on Western commercialism, juxtapositions of traditional Chinese artistic techniques with the symbols of capitalism, or lots of images of Chairman Mao. On display is a host of politicised post-Pop Art by big names like Zeng Fanzhi, Yue Minjun, Zhang Hongtu and Fang Lijun. Trouble is, it's all rather banal. Li Qing's Wedding (There Are Six Differences In The Two Paintings) seems a particularly inane piece of work, further undermined by the childlike gimmick revealed in the title. Shi Xinning's paintings of Mao in various odd political situations – in Venice, alongside Joseph McCarthy, in a car with the Queen, or sat next to Winston Churchill – come across as simplistic, whilst Wang Guangyi's pastiches of old Cultural Revolution propaganda just seem too late.

Similar in terms of political significance is Lei Wei's Love It! Bite It! It's a big floor-based model of an imaginary city made out of dog chews. Featuring various Western cultural landmarks like the Colosseum and the Guggenheim museum, and looking like a dilapidated architectural model, it's a neat (if slightly arbitrary) attack on Western civilisation. It's also just quite funny. And looks cool too. Likewise, Bal Yiluo's Civilisation – an installation of Greco-Roman busts skewered by gnarled wooden pitchforks – is another attack on two thousand years of perceived Western cultural hegemony. The sentiments are a little too straightforward, but aesthetically it's highly striking.



Lei Wei, 'Love It! Bite It!', edible dog chews, dimensions variable, 2005-7 (installation view)

There are several really powerful paintings on display. Take, for example, Zhang Huan's Seeds, which depicts a charred hard landscape, dotted with provincial workers, hunched and digging amongst the black gravel. Made of incense ash, charcoal and resin on canvas, this is a strong and literal piece. Then there's Zhang Huan's Insects No.2, a vast expanse of pink fleshy canvass, populated (one realises up close) by a host of crawling Dalí-esque ants.

For me, five works stand out. Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's fallen Angel, an old grey winged woman splatted on the floor. It's violent in a way, shockingly real, and somehow very very sad. Then there's two great works by Shen Shaomin, powerful perhaps because they don't seek political ends. Unknown Creature – Mosquito and Unknown Mosquito – Three Headed Monster are like skeletons from an Unnatural History Museum. Made of real animal bones, these are intimidating and fascinating pieces.

I'm also struck by Zhang Dali's haunting and memorable Chinese Offspring – fifteen figures hang, pinkly wounded, from the ceiling in a variety of contorted poses, each uniquely branded. There's poverty here and ugliness, a stark contrast to the slick white-girdered modernity of the Saatchi ceiling.

Finally to the lower ground floor, and another work by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu. Here Gallery 13 is filled by Old Persons' Home. A load of what look like aged world leaders, decrepit in their wheelchairs, buzz randomly backwards and forwards across the room, occasionally bumping into each other. Like some bitter and pathetic version of dodgems, it's silly and sad, but also fascinating and quite funny.

The new Saatchi Gallery is a great thing, a place to which everybody ought to go, soon and regularly. 'The Revolution Continues' is not the greatest exhibition ever – there's insufficient depth or complexity of thought – but it is big and it is bold. We don't know where Saatchi's going to take us next, but you can't say it isn't exciting.

'The Revolution Continues' continues until 18.01.09.

Click here to find out more about all the cool stuff happening at the Saatchi Gallery.

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Tom Jeffreys