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Post Pop: East Meets West, Saatchi Gallery, through February 23

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Post Pop: East Meets West, Saatchi Gallery, through February 23

The Post Pop: East Meets West exhibition opened at the Saatchi Gallery at the end of last year and is at the moment one of the most ambitious events on London's art scene. The exhibition, which contains 250 pieces of artwork by 110 artists from Russia, China, Great Britain and the United States, was created by the Saatchi Gallery in cooperation with the Tsukanov Family Foundation, of which one of the founders is Igor Tsukanov, a Russian businessman and art collector living in London. The exhibition is grandiose and its scope far-reaching; it covers all 6500 square metres of the Saatchi Gallery.

As Tsukanov, the author of the idea of the exhibition, says: “My idea was to show the development of the language of art by using examples from various countries. And undeniably the most universal in the 20th century has been the language of pop art. It was created in the 1950s in Great Britain and later thrived in the United States in the 1960s, but the way in which it was used in Russia, China and Great Britain differed dramatically. In essence, the exhibition is a story about how artists living in these countries used one and the same language for completely different goals.” Western pop art created ironic messages about the contemporary consumer cult and society's obsession with celebrities, while Soviet “Sots Art” drew attention to the absurdity of the government system and its ritual pomposity, conformism and false façade in the sarcastically ironic manner so typical of Russian art. For its part, Chinese “Political-Pop”, or “Cynical Realism”, spoke openly and uncompromisingly about hate, repression, contempt for the ruling regime and social inequality.

The exhibition has not been set up geographically but rather by themes (Habitat; Advertising and Consumerism; Celebrity and Mass Media; Art History; Religion and Ideology; Sex and the Body), thereby presenting it like a gigantic geopolitical puzzle that is at once a beneficial lesson as well as a sarcastic illuminating of the cynical and absurd world in which we live. Some of the artists included in the exhibition include the grandfather of Russian pop art Ilya Kabanov, American contemporary art superstars Jeff Koons and Richard Prince, and Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei. Among the most impressive works of art is the United Nations – Man and Space installation by Chinese artist Gu Wenda. The work consists of a gigantic “tent” made of the flags of many nations, which have in turn been made from locks of hair from four million people. Wenda's work is shocking in its beauty, yet it also sends a shudder down the spine.

Duke of York's HQ, King's Road, London SW3 4RY
www.saatchigallery.com

 

Made-In Company (Xu Zhen). 2011

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