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Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery - London - The Anatomy of the Individual

I believe that its not just because he is the grandson of the founder of modern psychology that his work is soaked with existential expression, despite being undeniable that drama runs in his blood. It was almost an analysis session for him to paint his sitters, he liked to talk to them and get to know about their passing lives. The long hours they spent in his studio were so he could see deeper and deeper into their souls. David Hockney’s small portrait, for example, took 130 sitting hours. All his sitters are stripped bear of their masks, even the ones that did not pose nude. His friend Harry Diamond seated for him fully dressed and stated: “if someone is interested in getting your essence down on canvas, they are also drawing your essence out of you”. Most of his sitters are looking the other way, not right at the viewer, for me that is a sign of his talent to express personal feelings without appealing to the eyes, which is the most common and easiest way into a person’s soul. The exhibition has a very illustrative chronological display as a narrative for the development of his art. We can see the evolution of his painting techniques and tools and be assured that he was bound to be the one modern painter of the self as it is inside. As Rembrandt, one of his masters, was for the seventeenth century. In Freud’s portraits the flesh seems real, maybe that is why he was considered a realist. The forms take an autonomy for themselves, even though they can’t be separated from the content that is the existential condition of that being. Animals and people receive the same treatment as everyday objects, all have the same aural and trembling aspect that gives life to his subjects. As Lucian said: “art is about the life of forms”. In his paintings the tension between material and immaterial is clearly present. Flesh is material, but his paintings show the spirit, the soul. He kept evolving and experimenting with psychology and paint up to the end of his life in 2011.

Reflections and other realities

Dan Graham creates virtual spaces on his unrealized mirrored installations at Lisson Gallery

Dan Graham is a master in providing a space for insight, not only exteriorly with his reflective installations but also interiorized as mirrors of the soul. For his exhibition at Lisson Gallery, London, he created two pavilions presented along with three other models in smaller sizes. All newly done for this show. The walk-in site-specifics provide an experience that can’t be taken for granted and that is possible to have on the gallery at 29 Bell Street until April 28th.

The artist thinks of himself as an American Caspar David Friedrich, as he says on a video screened as part of the show featuring other installations he has presented, some based on Zen Buddhist gardens. For the pieces outside the environment is reflected reminding of landscape painting. He creates heterotopian realms, to contextualize in Foucaultian theory, virtual spaces. Realities inside reality.

Dan Graham started to create these reflective pieces in the 1980’s. Places where people can interact, look at each other or at themselves, situating his work on the frontier between art and architecture. He has done projects for clients with kids to work as playgrounds on summer days. But his installations provoke almost the same impact on adults who go around the pieces wondering about the images projected, playing with the distortions.

It is a chance to experience an uncommon space and test your perception of yourself in relation to the realities around you. In this journey of virtual spaces and light if you don’t wonder if this is art, or even, is this reality? It definitely makes you reflect.