The world of visual arts is all about individual experiences. By this I mean the artworks on display, the visitors or staff around you, the smells, the noise or silence, the heat, the colours, the light or dark etc... Having said that as many of you might have noticed The Whitechapel Gallery is now open for a while and has an interesting but not dazzling collection on show.
At the entry we are welcomed with cement frames, the first floor is mostly a neon colour jumble mixed with gratuitous images that go from anus self stimulation to tasteless Berlin parades (Isa Genzken: Open, Sesame! in galleries 1, 8 and 9)
So far I can sense a putrid smell that seems to have no provenience, an even noisier than the Tate Britain’s cafeteria, laud visitors and apathetic vigilantes.
Apart from some of Lucien Freud, David Hockney and Damien Hirst's famous pieces ( part of Great Early Buys from the British Council Collection in gallery 7) the journey to the grim, polluted and overcrowded east does not seem worthwhile, until we encounter, slightly hidden at the back of the ground floor, the Zilkha Auditorium.
This auditorium has a good ambiance and the colourful chairs give it also a hip vibe of mainly calmness. On show are Ursula Mayer's three flicks: Interiors (2006), The Crystal Gaze (2007) and her most recent work Lunch in Fur/Le Déjeuner en Fourrure (2008). The last one gave me one of the best visual sensations in an art gallery in months. The three plots play with gender, sexuality, self-representation and memory. The gradient music and the lines constant repetition create an almost hallucinogenic and pagan representation of the second gender.
See it for yourself though. You might find it different!
