I wasn't exactly expecting to be blown away when visiting this show, it was more of a conformation of sorts. It confirmed that I don't really get much of an in depth feeling when looking at the work of Damien Hirst. The type of shock tactics used in, 'The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living', Hirst's shark in a tank of formaldehyde or the flies feeding off a rotting cow's head in, 'A Thousand Years', simply do not make me think about death, his supposed theme. I always wonder why, when attempting to rile up fellow students on the subject of Damien Hirst, they simply shrug their shoulders and suggest, it does what it say on the tin. Its like a short joke with the pleasure of laughing removed, look at this dead animal, now walk away, its comparable to a drive down a road kill laden country lane. Surely the more interesting points surrounding the theme of death in a world of supposed high or fine art, are more than the presentation of some dead animals in blue liquid, have we not moved beyond that by the year of 2012? It really seems as if its not rocket science to entice slightly more thought from the viewing public. However, reverting back to my earlier thought of, 'it does what it says on the tin', this is a certain kind of artist celebrity culture that is comparable to the pop music/performances of Lady GaGa, shock tactics to entertain with as little thought participation from the viewer as possible.
I was pleasantly surprised, after Hirst's show leaving me jaded, by the Alighiero Boetti exhibition a floor below. Boetti's mixture of sculpture, print and found objects raised important questions on the context of art, for its time. I was completely new to Boetti's work but instantly felt that, unlike Hirst, it was clearly questioning what had gone before, for example, the huge pane us glass which he had placed over an empty gallery and entitled, 'nothing to display, nothing to hide', raises important questions on the idea of a gallery space itself, even when displayed as some sort of sculptural documentation as it is in this case. When you compare just this one piece to any of Hirst's regularly displayed shock objects, you may start to feel the itch under my skin brought on by pill cabinets, fly colonies and excessively high auction prices. It is strange to think that not that long ago in 2009, John Baldesseri and Francis Alys's hugely thought provoking retrospectives stood in the same building.
Moving onto Yayoi Kusama, who perhaps sits somewhere in the middle of Hirst and Boetti. The saying, 'start how you mean to to finish' may apply to this retrospective of the Japanese mental asylum inhabitant. Starting out with some interesting small scale ink drawings and paintings, the show quickly descends into a performative fluxus-esq naked acid nightmare as the artist moves to New York and into circles with Andy Warhol and Claus Oldenberg. The shift in landscape culminated in the film, 'Self Obliteration', a sex orgy fused with shots of Kusama's polka dot laden mirror and paint performances, after which period she moved back to Japan to reside in a mental home and return to working in the more traditional way in which she began. The final pieces are mirrored rooms with coloured l.e.d.s which lean more towards the idea of infinity than party room, as with the New York era installations. It is interesting to think about how her time in America around possible celebrity culture influenced the work and how she acted, especially within this group of 3 exhibitions I have seen today, especially Hirst.
