The exhibition London Calling. British Art Today. From David Hockney to Idris Khan brings together the recent work of a score of British artists of different generations for whom the city of London has played a very important role in their artistic career.
The exhibition, which can be visited until October 17, takes an X-ray of the most contemporary creation of a cast of living artists born over five decades, between 1937 and 1978, and formed by David Hockney, Michael Craig- Martin, Phyllida Barlow, Sean Scully, Richard Deacon, Tony Cragg, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Cornelia Parker, Julian Opie, Grayson Perry, Yinka Shonibare, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, Mat Collishaw, Rachel Howard, Jason Martin, Annie Morris, and Idris Khan.
The exhibition reveals the current London art scene through a tour of fifty works, most of them unpublished in Spain and some made expressly for the exhibition, from the artists themselves and from international galleries and collections such as Gagosian Gallery, Hauser and Wirth , Goodman Gallery, Victoria Miró Gallery, Frith Street Gallery, Cristea Roberts Gallery, Science LTD, Modern Forms, Gallerie Lelong, Gallerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Hortensia Herrero and John J. Studzinski Collection, to which are added works from the Foundation's collection Bancaja.
The tour of the room follows the chronological order of birth of these creators, starting with the oldest, David Hockney, to the youngest, Idris Khan. The wide range of artists allows us to contemplate artistic techniques as varied as painting, sculpture, drawing, ceramics, photography, video, tapestries, installations or digital creation; disciplines in which they use a large number of materials such as cardboard, cloth, canvas, paper, cement, PVC, steel, bronze, vinyl, marble, leather, stone, aluminum, wax, plastic, silicone, silver, concrete or glass.
The selection of work reveals how topics as diverse as daily life, confinement derived from the pandemic, the exploration of the human being, the landscape, politics, religion, art history, the literature, music, gender, violence, motherhood, fertility, femininity, identity, commerce, race, home or the relationship between life and death. On the occasion of the exhibition, a catalog has been published with the reproduction of the works, an interview with each of the artists and the texts of the curators, Maya Binkin and Javier Molins.
Around london
In 1959, the Tate Gallery hosted an exhibition titled New American Painting, prompting art critic Lawrence Alloway to say that "no other country in the world could mount an exhibition of postwar paintings to match this one." In the same way, we could say now, when speaking of the London art scene, that no other city can present an exhibition that includes the quantity and quality of the artists present in the present London Calling exhibition. British art today. From David Hockney to Idris Khan.
The city of London began an economic and social transformation in the sixties that has led it to become one of the undisputed capitals of contemporary art. An art scene made up of countless art galleries, by museums or institutions at the level of the Tate, the Royal Academy of Arts or the Serpentine Gallery, or by highly prestigious art schools, which sparked a revolution in art with movements such as the New British Sculpture or the Young British Artists (YBA).
This exhibition brings together a series of contemporary artists still active whose artistic career has been influenced in some way by London, either because they went there during their training, moved to work there to be close to the great galleries and museums, or because They will leave the city in search of new artistic horizons, artists who at the same time have contributed to placing the city in the artistic avant-garde in the manner of Florence in the Renaissance, Paris with Impressionism or New York in the second half of the 20th century.