The Gagosian in Grosvenor Hill has been transformed into a dazzling curtained space for This Is Still Not a Pipe: The Afterlife of Magritte, an exhibition that pairs the Belgian surrealist with contemporary artists. The show is a joy.
René Magritte — fond of bowler hats, apples and saying pipes are not pipes — is one of the most recognisable and loved artists, certainly the most palatable of the surrealists, his imagery working its way into adverts, magazine covers and the whole pop culture Slopageddon.
A Lynchian transformation
Stepping into the gallery, visitors are reminded of his influence on David Lynch, with the space evoking Twin Peaks's Red Room but with all the eroticised juxtapositions of formality and the id. The exhibition focuses on Magritte's continuing influence on contemporary artists, displaying their work alongside the great man's.
While such an approach killed the Tate's Frida Kahlo exhibition, here Magritte's work makes up the bulk of the show, and the additional works are those that chime with his wit rather than adopt slavish worship.
Classic works and new companions
There is Magritte's The Flowers of the Journey from his first solo exhibition in 1926, through to more famous works like his self-portrait The Philosopher's Lamp, in which he is stuck his own penis nose in his pipe and smoking it. Sarah Lucas's SLAG sculpture makes for fine company here, as do a couple of Jeff Koons pieces and Yoko Ono's Sky TV, a live feed of the sky above the gallery echoing Magritte's famous cloud works.
Funny, not funny
Everything operates in that funny/not funny way: back out of the Slopageddon, you see the disturbing nature of Magritte's visions, the loss and disturbance, with death lurking. Here the puppeteering witches in Victor Man's Titiriteros gaze down on the landscape of Magritte's Natural Selection, where the clouds sit on the ground and rain upwards — what dark forces are really at play in all this bonkers work?
The exhibition runs until December 12 at gagosian.com.
