Space Pod Alights at the Serpentine Gallery

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/arts/design/space-pod-alights-at-the-serpentine-gallery.html

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LONDON — For the 15th year, the Serpentine Gallery has commissioned an architect to design a temporary structure on its front lawn in Kensington Gardens here. Generally, those who are chosen have not built anything in Britain before. Over the years, Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Sou Fujimoto and Rem Koolhaas have each planted a pavilion here, some more bizarre than others. This year’s creation, by the Chilean architect Smiljan Radic, is a kind of alien space pod resting on 62 tons of giant quarry stones. Fashioned from semi-translucent, glass-reinforced plastic, like the Fiberglas used to build yachts, it arrived in 66 pieces and took six weeks to install. Inside are a cafe and space for events that bring together art, poetry, literature and film by emerging creators.

Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans-Ulrich Obrist, co-directors of exhibitions at the Serpentine, said they first saw Mr. Radic’s work at the 2010 Architecture Biennale in Venice.

On a recent cloudless morning here, Mr. Radic was strolling around the pavilion with the directors, discussing the inspiration for his design. “I thought of those architecture follies around England and France from the late 16th century,” he said, explaining that he started out by fashioning a model out of papier mâché and then decided that he wanted the pavilion to have the same kind of handmade textured, bandagelike surface.

On one side of the structure is a protruding gray steel window that Mr. Radic likens to a binnacle, the box that encases a ship’s compass. The boulders on which the pavilion sits have a primitive feel, an intriguing contrast to the building’s futuristic shape.

The pavilion, on view through Oct. 19, is illuminated at night. “Thanks to the semi-transparency of the shell,” Mr. Radic said, “the light will attract the attention of passers-by, like lamps attracting moths.”

SCOTTISH SINGULARITY

With Scots preparing to vote in a referendum on independence in September, a nationwide series of exhibitions celebrating 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland seems timely. The initiative, “Generation,” which kicked off last week at the National Galleries of Scotland, features the work of more than 100 artists at over 60 museums, galleries and exhibition spaces.

To an American art audience, “Generation” may seem like a copycat version of “Pacific Standard Time,” a sprawling event organized in Southern California in 2011-12 that charted the rise of the Los Angeles art scene from 1945 to 1980. Ten years in the making, it spanned nearly 170 exhibitions at 130 museums and galleries.

But Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, who oversees “Generation,” said he only became aware of “Pacific Standard Time” after he had started organizing his own initiative. Then “I looked at what they did to see what it could teach us,” he said in a telephone interview.

At the heart of “Generation” is a three-part free exhibition in Edinburgh at the Scottish National Gallery, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. It will include some of the most historically important works created in Scotland over the last 25 years, as well as re-creations of significant shows. Also on view will be six newly commissioned installations and recent paintings, drawings and photography.

“It’s an attempt to create a narrative putting together the history of activity that sets Scotland apart from British art over the last 25 years,” Mr. Groom said. “It used to be that artists would go to London or New York or Berlin, but now you don’t need to do that.”

Among the historical works that have been restaged is “On Form & Fiction,” which opened at the Third Eye Center in Glasgow in 1990. An immersive environment of ink and acrylic drawings, benches and music, it was created by the painter Steven Campbell, part of a seminal group of artists who had burst onto the Glasgow art scene a few years earlier.

“It is crucial in the way it links two generations,” Mr. Groom said. “It is a total environment that captures that shift from painting as a representative object that hangs on a wall to something that completely envelops you.”

The exhibitions will chart a sea change in the way art is made and how the Scottish art world became ever more diverse over the years. Among the artists represented are many past winners of Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize, including Martin Boyce, Richard Wright, Douglas Gordon, Simon Starling, Martin Creed and Susan Philipsz.

A PASSION FOR THE SACRED

Blood and guts help keep viewers hooked on the television series “Game of Thrones.” And at Sotheby’s in London, it seems that experts in its old master painting department also relish a bit of gore — say, the head of St. John the Baptist on a platter, Christ’s whipped body and unnerving images of skulls. Such images can be found in “Contemplation of the Divine,” a private sale exhibition running from Saturday through July 16. This exhibition includes 19 paintings — mostly Spanish, Italian and Netherlandish — dating from the early Renaissance through the late Baroque, and seven Spanish sculptures from the 16th through the 18th centuries.

“We wanted to curate a show bringing together material that specifically reflects a period and a look,” said James Macdonald, head of private sales in the old master painting department at Sotheby’s in London. Part of the impetus for the show is a renewed interest in Spanish sculpture and its link to painting since the 2009-10 exhibition “Sacred Made Real,” at the National Gallery here.

In advance of the “Divine” exhibition, its star painting, Francisco de Zurbarán’s “Christ on the Cross With the Virgin, Mary Magdalene and Saint John at his Feet,” from 1655, was on view in a gallery adjacent to the salesroom for a contemporary-art auction at Sotheby’s on Monday night. Measuring roughly 7 by 5 feet, it comes from a private collection in England and has an asking price of around £6.5 million ($11.2 million). “We wanted to bring it to a new audience,” Mr. Macdonald said of the contemporary-art crowd.