blog

ROCK STARS,AGED PUNKS AND CHINESE PRODUCTION LINES

I’m holed up in penthouse apartment on the top floor of the new Sanctum hotel in Soho. I’m not sure I can go back to a standard mirror without the appearance of a giant plasma screen at a touch of a button after this.There’s a freestanding bath in the middle of the room separated by a glittery curtain and a hot tub on the roof terrace. It’s a bit chilly to be relaxing in the private bar. I’m not here to escape the madness of my studio though, and believe me I wish I was. It’s been crazy in there this last month with shows to dispatch to Milan, Hong Kong and NYC. I’m here to shoot the first few segments of my new TV show for JackTV, in which I take on the role as the reluctant agony uncle from the comfort of my four poster bed.Whilst I await my first guest, day dreaming into the luxury surroundings as they are reflected in the mirror opposite, I recall an exhibition I saw the previous day.

I’ve been goggling at the spectacle that Jean-Charles de Castelbajac sends down the catwalk for what seems like forever now. Collection after collection of his work animates ‘pop’ to more dizzying extents.To say I’m a fan is an understatement and I was certainly amongst the first to step foot into his store on Conduit Street when it opened a year or so ago. It had all the energy and excitement that I’d have expected from Keith Haring’s Pop Shop in New York city except this one had landed slap bang in the centre of London’s posh fashion district, the kind of Trojan measure synonymous with JC/DC’s oeuvre. I do feel a huge connection to Jean-Charles’ work. In fact after I made him a special piece for his home last year he described us both as ‘poptists’. I’m not sure I’m quite one but I’m convinced he truly is. Nowadays of course it’s not so odd to see fashion designers sending art down the runway, but JC’s symbiotic relationship with art over the last few decades is certainly one of the deepest and most genuine. I’ve been anticipating his first ever art exhibition for some time, so it was with huge excitement that I escalated the dusty stairs of Paradise Row, tucked behind Brick Lane.

Greeted by classic JC/DC wallpaper motifs, art historical pieces resided uncomfortably on their conflicting surface.
Chunky stretchers added a contemporary twist to his made in China kitsch appropriation of classic art’s greatest hits. It was refreshing to witness proper oil painting; the technique was exquisite, but my mind couldn’t help surrounding the work by the Chinese factory line production approach, and of course this is the central point of the work.The luxury brands we consume are after all mass produced products on a factory line, they are by their nature a fake version of luxury.These works too, a fake variation of an over reproduced image, itself reduced to a neatly packaged commodity.

There’s no ambiguity in JC’s sentiment as the perfect replicas of Piero della Francesca, Bronzino and Manet wrestle
uncomfortably with the appropriated brand logos of major fashion houses. Art obscured by consumption. There was
without doubt a lack of subtlety conceptually, however JC has always worn the surface blatantly on his sleeve, he’s a
protagonist of old school Pop, where surface is king.The deadpan experience left me colder than I would have expected, with a sense of promise in the unresolved and troubled world that I believe he inhabits, where luxury, commerce and true art tussle. If there was ever a creative who could solve such an equation it would need to be JC/DC. However I hope he never does and that what I witnessed was the very tip of an iceberg of enquiry for him that will take us, in future to the extremes I know he has within him.

There’s a knock on my door of my suite and my first guest arrives. Hanna from Trolley Gallery has quite a serious
problem, they’ve just printing 1001 books of HIM, a life size wax-work of Charles Saatchi, with fully movable action toy style limbs, complete with interchangeable outfits by the artist. In the process, of course, he becomes the plaything of his maker, a comedy collectable beautifully presented in the HIM BOOK.This really is Saatchi as you’ve never seen him before.And Hanna’s problem? Well it seems our collector supreme has dismissed Nigela’s glorious din-dins in favour of nothing but eggs and he’s shed more than a couple of pounds.The long and short of it – HIM no longer resembles the real ‘him’ as much as it used to.What should they do? Just as I’m about to offer the solution- my own plastic action monkey toy – Iron Maiden’s management storm in, all black t-shirts and sunglasses to check the noise levels in the room.And the issue is back to front, you see it’s owned by these guys and the point is it’s a sanctum for rock stars, they want to check that we can’t hear the ruckus of rock from the room next door.Nope, all good here, silent as the night.

These days it’s so easy to get work fabricated or produced for you that craft and finish are almost irrelevant, as JC
proved with his meticulous Chinese visages. I could literally have that plastic toy I gave Hanna blown up to any size and made in any material. This to me just highlights the important of concept, the same revolution the cheap dv cams bought to filmmaking is inevitable in visual art that can be ‘farmed out’.

I think that’s why I was so underwhelmed by Marcus Harvey’s new show at White Cube in Hoxton Square.You see my disappointment came because I know he’s a powerful painter. I’ve admired him for a long time, but today his slick bronze sculptures depicting Winston Churchill with his turf mohican and army helmets supported by bronze rifles seemed beyond done to death.

Of course we’re all well aware of the Saatchi fuelled media circus around the child’s hand print portrait of Myra Hindley, but that was twelve years ago now. I have to say his similar work depicting Margaret Thatcher was interesting yet not captivating. I was largely confused by the show. I admire Marcus as a great painter, his work is gestural, visceral and emotive.There was a good example to be found in Albus, Harvey’s oil and acrylic painting of the white cliffs of Dover, however his bronze versions of street art stirred reminiscences of D-Face and Banksy. As a post-ironic, mid life crisis attempt to utilise a overused vocabulary the sculptures were a resounding success. But this obviously wasn’t Marcus’ intention. He was straight up about this, and I admire his passion in caring about the social relevance of these symbols but his criticism lacks the lustre and humour we’ve seen over the past decade or so on the same subject.

Grand materials and epic scale works don’t guarantee a successful outcome. Marcus Harvey is to me one of our great artists, however there’s only so much perfect fabrication and regurgitation of machine guns, US flags, anti-war and anticapitalism references that I can stand.

My last guest leaves my suite and I conjure the perfect cliché as an ending for the show, I try everything to get my hand through the mirror in front of my bed to rip out the TV set, quickly realising that this is indeed a hotel for rock stars, they’ve made it impossible to chuck the thing out the window.Very clever chaps.