Friday, April 28–Saturday, July 29, 2017
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac
37 Dover Street
London W1S4NJ
Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac London will open to public on Friday, April 28, 2017. The new London gallery is located at Ely House in Mayfair, a historical five-floor 18th century mansion restored by New York-based architect Annabelle Selldorf. The gallery will be inaugurated with a series of four exhibitions in the ground and first floor galleries:
–A presentation of early pictures and video sculpture by Gilbert & George
–American Minimal Art from the Marzona Collection
–Drawings from the 1950s and 1960s and sculpture by Joseph Beuys
–A solo exhibition of new performance and sculpture by Oliver Beer
The opening programme reflects Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac’s ambition for the London gallery to serve as a platform for presenting carefully curated exhibitions featuring historical works by established and emerging artists.
Gilbert & George: Drinking Pieces & Video Sculptures, 1972-1973
This exhibition set in the ground floor Ely Gallery presents a group of “Drinking Pieces” and “Video Sculpture” from the early 1970s. After selling their first artwork in 1970, Gilbert & George celebrated by getting drunk together and recording their experiences in a series of black and white pictures depicting them in various states of inebriation.
American Minimal Art From The Marzona Collection
The first floor Library Gallery will showcase a selection of recently acquired sculpture and paintings from the Marzona Collection. The exhibition will feature works by the American masters of the Conceptual and Minimal movements, including one of the first Richard Serra lead floor sculptures from 1968, one of Donald Judd’s earliest Cor-ten steel stacks and key works by Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Lee Lozano, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback and Richard Tuttle.
Egidio Marzona, born in 1944 in Germany, has built one of the most significant collections of Arte Povera, Conceptual, Minimal and Land Art of its kind, collecting in the mid-1960s against a backdrop of vigorous political protests. He engaged deeply with theories and manifestos of the early conceptual and minimal artists whilst collecting their work extensively.
Joseph Beuys: Backrest for a Fine-Limbed Person of the 20th Century AD, 1972-1982, and Early Drawings
Located in the Chapel Gallery on the first floor of Ely House, this exhibition assembles a series of early drawings alongside an important sculpture by German artist Joseph Beuys.
The exhibition will focus on the connection between Beuys’ early works on paper and his sculpture practice.
In the 1950s, Beuys used pencil or watercolour to reveal delicately rendered allegoric figures expressing the union of humanity with nature. He also employed unorthodox materials such as beeswax, chalk and margarine. The sculpture represents a figure cast in iron based on a therapeutic backrest, originally used to support an injured body. Through this reference, Beuys addresses individual and universal suffering, looking at art as a means of healing.
Oliver Beer: New Performance and Sculpture
This exhibition will present new works developed by the British artist Oliver Beer (b.1985) whilst in residence at Ely House during a six-month period leading up to the gallery opening. Beer, trained in musical composition, fine arts and film theory, utilises his sensitivity to sound as a physical phenomenon to underpin his practice in sculpture, film and performance.
A new addition to his Resonance Project, Beer will instruct classically trained singers placed amongst the vaults and columns of Ely House, to sing the right notes at the right pitch to activate the space’s own resonant notes, picking up on the natural frequencies of the space revealing the infamous “Diabolus in Musica,” an accord formerly believed by the Catholic Church to be the musical incarnation of the devil.
