From My City

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Saatchi Gallery's Sculpture Exhibition

Saatchi Gallery’s first sculpture exhibition, The Shape of Things to Come,  presents twenty sculptors from around the world, each with their own  individual approach to 3D art.

In the first room, Kris Martin’s rock installation ‘ Summit’ greets us with a prehistoric ambience. This installation, showing  a group of eight huge stones, triggers our curiosity as we immediately notice on top of each of them a minuscule paper cross. The artist said "The top is nice when you haven't reached it. But once you get [there], the potential is gone. Dreams are what keep people going". Some of the pieces exhibited could however provoke bad dreams.   An example of such macabre work is Folker de Jong’s ‘ The Shooting Lesson’(see featured image), which recreates life size characters taken from Picasso’s ‘Les Saltimbanques’ featuring a group of itinerant circus performers including the traditional Arlequin. Their disturbing features are accentuated by the use of material such as polyurethane foam and the choice of green olive colour.

In complete contrast, one can find a ‘fairy-tale’ piece such as Roger Hiorns’ ‘Copper Sulphate Chartres and Copper Sulphate Notre-Dame’.

Roger Hiorns Copper Sulphate Chartres And Copper Sulphate Notre Dame 1996

Two other works deserve to be mentioned. David Altmmejd’s ‘ the New North’, a giant yeti-figure made of mirror, horse hair, crystals and wires and John Baldessari's "Beethoven's Trumpet (With Ear), a wall-mounted ear trumpet (picture on top). When the viewer speaks into the trumpet, Beethoven's music is heard, an allusion to the composer's deafness.

Until 16 October 2011. http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/index.htm