What’s Hot? With Francesca Gavin
The topsy-turvy is a perfect metaphor for the confused times we are living in. The month brings together a cluster of exhibitions that are turning everything upside down.
Maurits Cornelis Escher plays with perception. The Dutch graphic artist emerged in the 1930s is better known as M.C. to the general public. He is an artist so influential on visual culture that visiting this exhibition feels like seeing old friends. There are 150 pieces here – largely intricate woodcuts, lithographs and engravings – veering from his early landscape studies of the Mediterranean to surreal mathematical paradoxes that defy possibility. This is work that has shaped how humanity sees, and Escher’s legacy is visible here in black-light posters, album covers, advertising, as well as art. The exhibition design – a coproduction with Arthemisia and Fever – focuses on social media-friendly photo opportunities and some AI filmic madness. Somehow that feels a little dated compared to the sheer complexity and brilliance of Escher’s work itself, which deserves 5 stars in its own right.
The collaborative exhibition from Jock McFadyen and artist-musician Jem Finer (formerly of The Pogues) is one of the most surprising exhibitions of the summer. The exhibition literally takes the underground subterranean grime of the tube system as its focus. The work centres around McFadyen’s large-scale paintings of the tube, from gritty disintegrating platforms at Aldgate East and Kentish Town. The Royal Academician has been working on the subject since the 1990s. This is accompanied by an immersive soundtrack by Finer, created from field recordings of the increasingly visceral screeching from the Northern and Central line. (“Ear defenders” are available at the reception desk for those who find it uncomfortable. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the stretch between Camden and Euston.) The images are familiar and nostalgic at once. The underground rose to the epic scale of history painting. A glimpse of a London in slow decline.
Alex Israel’s exhibition ‘Upside Down’ upturns things literally. The space is filled with a series of oversized Plexiglass sculptures hanging from the ceiling that resemble pastel, translucent surfboard fins. The gallery window becomes a fish tank. An obsession with Los Angeles surface pop energy is the artist’s speciality. However, unlike the 1960s conceptual and pop artists and even the trashy teen surf movies which he references, the work falls flat.
Around the corner, Sylvia Kouvali’s show of American artist Jason Dodge saves the day. This is his first exhibition in London since 2008. It exudes conceptual rigour and weirdness. The show opens with a playful list of words pinned to a wall next to two holes on a fake wall. Beyond it is an installation of meticulously arranged pillows, a long line of feathery garbage as if attacked by a giant cat and some flashing lights that turn on and off sporadically. A cat dish and what appears to be a bucket of pee sit in other corners of the space. In Dodge’s world, something is about to happen, or we are in its aftermath. Meaning is malleable and sticky, and exists in our heads.
M.C. Escher: The Exhibition, until 6 Sept, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2
Jock McFadyen RA and Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface), until 20 Sept, Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London EC2
Alex Israel: Upside Down, until 5 Sept, Gagosian, Davies Street, London W1
Jason Dodge, until 26 Sept, Sylvia Kouvali, 12a Bourdon Street, London W1