Charles Saatchi is synonymous with the revival in British art in the 1990s. The collector introduced the world to Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst’s shark. His Saatchi-style is a recognizable genre: it’s visceral, figurative, sometimes shocking.
Today, the advertising executive opens his new gallery to reporters - after three years largely absent from the London exhibition scene.
The Saatchi Gallery on King’s Road, Chelsea, formally opens on Oct. 9. It is a triumph, architecturally at least. The first exhibition, “The Revolution Continues: New Art from China” is exactly what we have come to expect from Saatchi shows. How much you like it will depend on your taste for bold imagery and old - fashioned figurative painting.
While much contemporary art is cool and cerebral, Saatchi favors subject matter that nobody could possibly mistake. A sculpture by Liu Wei, “Indigestion II”, represents a pile of excrement two meters across. Wei’s offering is undeniably - in fact inescapably - visceral. Saatchi-type art often is. (Bloomberg)