Art Box
It’s a fortuitous thing that the Spot Challenge is taking place in January. Because during the warmer days, cities like Rome, Athens, and Paris are swarmed with tourists eager to eat crepes and buy magnets. Rome in January is actually a magnificent city. The air is crisp, the skies are blue, and streets are more manageable without all the overbearing group tours.
The Italian location for Gagosian (just few blocks away from Fontana di Trevi) is actually our favorite of Larry’s properties so far architecturally. It’s a gorgeous, curved room that happened to host the smallest spot on display in the world…the 1 x 1/2 inch, yellow wonder from 1996 (pictured). It’s very tiny and very refreshing after this week’s big spot overdrive.
It took us 16 hours, and practically 3 continents to get to Athens with a stopover at Doha along the way. The Qatar capital will soon host a huge Murakami exhibit, but for now, all we had to play with was the terminal, that reminded us of the Middle Eastern version of LaGuardia. Though it has to be said: those elite traveler shuttle buses are mighty impressive.
But back to Athens… It’s a strange time for a Greek capital with widespread talks of defaults and national bankruptcy. Yes, the folks might be scared but they still have the Parthenon and Acropolis here, and now their very own Gagosian to boot. The Greek outpost is located on the magically named Merlin Street and it’s very intimate to say the least. There are only 6 Hirst works on display, and yet like in every other Gagosian location, a focused guard is fiercely watching over the pieces in every room (seriously, what was the security budget for this thing?). The gallery attendants also get gold stars for being the friendliest so far on our journey.
Merlin Street is also filled with orange trees that can be found on every decent street corner (instant Hong Kong déjà vu!) and the art scene is showing promises. The Greek Gagosian girls kindly recommended us few shows: Jonathan Meese effort at Eliades, 20th century Russian painters show at a beautiful B & M Theocharakis Foundation (pictured), and a strong group effort at Rebecca M. Camnhi gallery (that featured works by Ross Bleckner and Nan Goldin among others).
And then of course our hotel concierge named Alexandro recommended a wonderful soulvaki place on Byron, which might be the greatest piece of art of them all.
Hong Kong is perhaps the most exotic stop on our journey, and yet this A.I like city is not as intimidating as it seems. You see, thanks to the most awesome elevated escalator pedestrian city on Earth, we managed to do everything on our priority list in less than 45 minutes this morning. That included a super bullet train from the airport that connected to Mandarin Oriental that in turn connected to Gagosian that’s also connected to every luxury mall imaginable including Lane Crawford. Then, we decided to do much more.
But first back to Gagosian…Since White Cube isn’t opening until later this year (Jay Jopling is a wise man, 2012 is a year of the Water Dragon, which basically translates to a lot of cash!), Gagosian is still primarily the only big player in town aside from the Art Fair rush every May. The quiet, 7th floor Pedder Street location (across Vuitton’s biggest store on the planet) has been in business for less than a year and things look promising in Hong Kong (it won’t officially play by China’s rules until 2047!). Our favorite piece during the Asian leg of the tour was the square “Controlled Substance Key Painting” (1993-1994) complete with lovely typography and numerology. Though after New York’s spectacular, the shows are visibly smaller.
