Sarah Lucas: SITUATION / Whitechapel Gallery
Sarah Lucas is an English artist born in 1962. She studied art at The Working Men´s College (1982-83), London College of Printing (1983-84) and Goldsmith´s College where she was graduated in Fine Art in 1987. Sarah is part of the generation of Young British Artists who emerged during 1990.
Her work encompasses photography, sculpture and installation. In these days you can discover a wonderful retrospective of more than two decades of her work in the WhiteChapel supported by Louis Vuitton. The exhibition is divided into three rooms: Galleries 1, 8 and 9 or Victor Petitgas Gallery. This is an exhibition for adults as advises a sign at the main door: Not suitable for children.
As soon as you go through this main door you feel surrounded by Sarah´s universe. You can contemplate her earliest works, a perfect agglomeration of sexual body parts accompanied by lots of melons breasts, fried-eggs breasts, kippers, kebabs, raw chickens and a pair of Spanish hams conjoined with underpants and supine on a grease-stained mattress. All these objects are alone and take part in a conversation at the same time. But the real work of Sarah Lucas goes through over and the sexual body parts and those are just a pretext to criticize the society and the abuse of power, indistinctly masculine or female. At the same time she forces us to investigate our relationship with the human body and our psyches. And she does not forget to criticize the consumerism in our culture.
We go up by the stairs and at the top, a photograph of the pensive artist, with a skull among her feet, is illuminated in the reddish glow of a neon coffin. Go over a wallpaper room of her naked ex boyfriend, the painter Gary Hume with a mattress installation, The surreal house, as a centerpiece.
The first thing you find as soon as you get into this last lounge is a change . We can admire some pictures made out by cigarettes creating a link between the obsessional, introverted activities of smoking and drawing. Bigger sculptures of Kinky boots and at the end of the room we can admire her recent bronze sculptures that scandalize Venice Biennale but they are so cast and beautiful as well. In my opinion these sculptures transmit a deep sadness.
SARAH LUCAS. SITUATION. WHITECHAPEL GALLERY. LONDON. Through 15 December, 2013.
by Susana Lopez Fernandez
in News
Nov 26, 2013