Summer Show

Gagosian is pleased to present Summer Show, a group exhibition featuring work by Tom Friedman, Douglas Gordon, Damien Hirst, Mike Kelley, Jenny Saville, Alec Soth, and Franz West, chosen for its emphasis on the physical form.

The expressionless pose of Tom Friedman’s bigbluefigure consciously recalls the conventions of classical sculpture. The exaggerated spatial proportions and almost fluid interchangeability of Styrofoam and marble mark an experimental approach to form and material that Friedman takes in many of his sculptural works.

Although sharing a similar affinity for the monumental, Jenny Saville’s paintings of grotesques exploit the organic qualities of paint that compose her semiabstract corporeal figures, in this instance a slaughtered pig. Marked by broad, messy brushstrokes, Suspension is firmly rooted in the physical world of blood and decay.

Damien Hirst’s triptych The Sun, The Moon and The Earth expands on his career-long preoccupation with life, death, and mortality. The work is part of an ongoing series of paintings in which Hirst’s use of real butterflies as a metaphor for nature and beauty symbolizes the precarious balance of life.

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