Piccadilly Exhibitions!

Here's a list of exhibitions I've been to see one morning this week around the Piccadilly area. It's a great little circuit if you have a couple of hours to spare! 
Royal Academy of Arts

Constable, Gainsborough, Turner. 
Ends Sun 17th Feb
Get to the RA this weekend to catch this wonderfully romantic show of landscapes by these masters and more. They have etchings, watercolours, oil paintings, and some of the artist's palettes and personal objects, which is pretty amazing!

Mariko Mori
Ends Sun 17th Feb
This exhibition is round the back of the RA in Burlington Gardens. I found some of the light pieces to look kind of like something you'd find as a centrepiece at a holistic spa, and they certainly gave off 'zen' vibes - I felt pretty chilled out. It's not a brain ache of a show, it felt like smooth, gentle, aesthetic porn for your retinas. 

Pace London - Keith Tyson
Ends 28th March
Also at the back of the RA in Burlington Gardens is Pace Gallery. I didn't spend much time looking at the work, but I found Tyson's paintings to be quite confusing. There's just so much happening visually, and an eerie illusion of paint that looks as though it could be from a spray can. There are areas of paint application that I found really interesting, but overall I felt a bit overwhelmed.


Hauser & Wirth - Piccadilly

Philippe Vandenberg
Ends 13th April
I am such a big fan of this exhibition space, it allows for both large and small works to sit comfortably. I found Vandenberg's paintings really intriguing, depictions of sex and pagan ritual sit within a background that allows the viewer some space away from the concentrated emotions within the works' centres. His small paintings on board are simple, yet with his use of text, still hold an atmosphere of complexity which I couldn't begin to decipher.


Hauser & Wirth - Savile Row

Eva Hesse
Ends 9th March
Hesse's sculptural paintings didn't really hold my interest for that long, but I was taken by the colours she uses in her series with no title, they reminded me of an interior design catalogue from the 60's (this makes sense as the paintings were made in 1965). Her drawings straddle a line of mechanical and fabrics, which I found more interesting than the paintings.

Bruce Nauman 
Ends 9th March
'mindfuck' is an exhibition dripping with psychoanalytic reference that I couldn't even begin to attempt to filter through my brain (my mind = fucked). However, I got so much enjoyment from viewing his neon works, particularly the uncomfortable squeeze into 'Untitled (Helman Gallery Parallelogram)' where you are disorientated by green neon light. I also really liked his 'Good Boy, Bad Boy' monolith, it flashed through the listed phrases and lit the space rhythmically.

Ordovas (Directly opposite H&W Savile Row)

Movement and Gravity: Bacon and Rodin in Dialogue
Ends 6th April
This tiny, glass fronted gallery caught my eye and I was delighted to see 3 of Rodin's sculptures sitting alongside 3 of Bacon's studies of the human body. The exhibition explores the inspiration Bacon found in Rodin's works, and it opened my eyes to a new way of approaching the relationships between painting and sculpture, and nakedness as a subject matter.
There will also be a performance responding to the work and its themes by choreographer Joe Moran at the gallery on 14th March.