Bathers at Saatchi-Yates...
7:52 p.m.10/08/23 - Saatchi-Yates, the new gallery in London, shines (and ever more) with its exhibitions with museum-quality curatorships. For this European summer the walls of the gallery are covered with paintings related to the sea, the pools and the people that enjoy those spaces. The exhibition is entitled Bathers and it showcases artists from Picasso to Damien Hirst, including oils from the 17th to the 19th century.
Two Similar Swimming Forms in Infinite Flight, de Damien Hirst (1993)
Materials: Acrylic, painted aluminium, sharks and formaldehyde solution / Measures: 83 x 274 x 285 cm
Golden Rescue, by Benjamin Spiers (2023)
Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 120 x 110 cm
Technique: oil on canvas / Measures: 248,92 x 279,4 cm
With surrealism, Spiers (UK, 1972) created a Rescue heroine, such as those that appeared in the TV series Baywatch, starring (among others) by Pamela Anderson. The actress repeated a scene that became famous: in slow motion, she ran along the beach to save someone who was drowning in the sea. The artist exaggerates her golden hair, falling absurdly all over her face.
On the other hand, Eric Fischl (USA 1948) places us as observers of a scene on a monumental scale (almost 3 meters long) in which it is not clear what is happening by the pool in the patio of this house. When we stop and try to understand the action, we discover that the connection between the characters is strange, as are their attitudes.
Gregory in the pool (Paper Pool 4), by David Hockney (1978)
Green Bather, by Angela Santana (2023)
Of course, David Hockney, master of pool scenes, could not be absent. Here he portrays his friend Gregory in a painting that is close to abstraction. Finally, Angela Santana (Switzerland, 1986). With Green Bather the artist depicts her body from a different point of view, not from the front but from below, showing it with indefinite edges. According to her own account, it is “a powerful image”.
In short, the exhibition invites us to explore a tempestuous variety, where the human or living condition is exposed in all its forms: different clothing, varied bodies, innocence or sexuality and even death, if we consider Damien Hirst's shark. The exhibition reveals, then, a concern of the artists regarding the combination of water with a being that throughout the history of art remains present.
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