a gallery per day: saturday

richard serra, back to back
thanks to www.gagosian.com

gagosian gallery
richard serra, albert giacometti, cy twombly and lucio fontana - living, working, making

so, yesterday i went to coffee morning, a cute little institution here in london, and there i met a bunch of people i had never met before. anyway, i got talking to msblogkx, who works for create KX in supporting the creativity in the kings cross area and she encouraged me to check out any galleries in the area and let her know if i blogged about them. i decided to check which galleries were in the area as a plan to go there on monday. lo and behold, i discover that the Gagosian is in kings cross and that the show featuring Giacometti, Serra, Twombly and Fontana was closing today.

i jumped on the tube and when i got out at the station, it was like a ghost town. the FA Cup final had started and it was a nice easy trip down pentonville rd to the gallery.

for those who don't know, gagosian is a top-class commercial gallery, based mostly in new york, with 2 large galleries there and responsible for the careers of some of the world's most well-known artists. the gallery in kings cross is an impressive half a block long with 4 galleries, plus a viewing room (upstairs i presume). the walls are huge and whiter than white, lit by a combination of artificial lighting and huge skylights, giving the gallery a great neutral lighting system. the grey concrete floors and staff all dressed in black provides an austerity to the place which can be simultaneously intimidating and authoratitive and i'm glad that i don't phase easily otherwise i may have missed out on an awesome show.

the group show (if you can still call it that with the amount of heavyweights) was so well chosen. the mix of approaches and focus was perfect - all working in bronze, but giacometti's delicate and figurative works perfectly balanced serra's big, blocky industrial works. cy twombly's works were also on the delicate side, but he worked more with natural colours and found objects - long, lean and angular, which were lovingly opposed by fontana's soft blobs of bronze on the floor.

i stayed in the space for ages, drawing and admiring the works of sculptural kings. the next show at the gallery will be paintings by jeff koons and i'll be looking forward to checking that out. and if other spaces in kings cross are half as good as gagosian, they have a gold-mine on their hands!