London's summer auctions have provided a lot of noise and thunder in the last two weeks, but meanwhile, there is also plenty to see in the ground at the city's many outstanding galleries. Here are our picks for a few of the best.
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“Invisible: Art About the Unseen 1957-2012” at the Hayward Gallery, through August 5
A deeply clever, historically thought-provoking exhibition organized by curator Ralph Rugoff explores ideas relating to the invisible and the hidden in visual art. Yves Klein’s “Void Room” from 1961 and his spacey concept regarding “the architecture of air” joust with Maurizio Cattelan’s absurd and officially stamped Italian police report about a stolen invisible painting and Claes Oldenburg’s spooky and unrealized “Buried Monument to John F. Kennedy” — a proposal to create a gigantic hollow form in the shape of the assassinated president underground — are a few of the remarkable highlights.
“Nouveau Realisme” at Luxembourg & Dayan at 2 Saville Row, through August 11
A superb pastiche of museum-quality works ranging from Yves Klein’s "IKB 170" (1960) to Martial Raysse’s stunning collage “Pamela Beach” (1963), including a jaunty hat and earring, as well as lesser known works by Gerard Deschamps and Raymond Hains, delivers a short course on the European side of Pop Art.
“Bridget Riley — Works 1960-66” at Hazlitt Holland-Hibbert, 38 Bury Street and Karsten Schubert, 5-8 Lower John Street, Golden Square, through July 13
Let the art market weep to see these classic, optically challenging pictures, beautifully arranged in a two-part exhibition that features some of Riley’s best work, including “Horizontal Vibration” (1961) and “Climax” (1963). An excellent catalogue, highlighted by a combative 1967 interview with the artist by the late and great David Sylvester, broadens the experience.
“Irving Penn — Cigarettes” at Hamiltons, 13 Carlos Place, through August 17
Exhibited for the first time in its entirety, the 26 platinum palladium prints of found cigarette butts sourced from the streets of New York in 1972, carefully set-up and then photographed in extreme close-up, convey Penn’s Minimalist genius. A selection of the works debuted at the Museum of Modern Art in 1975 in an exhibition organized by John Szarkowski, MoMA’s storied photography guru, but the decidedly postmodern display was largely panned at the time.
“Diane Arbus: Affinities” at Timothy Taylor Gallery, 15 Carlos Place through August 17
The mere presence of American photography titans Arbus and Penn, literally doors away from one another, makes this a stunning treat, with 32 Arbus gelatin silver prints from from 1956 to 1971, including “A husband and wife in the woods at a nudist camp, N.J” (1963) and “A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C.” (1968). Arbus visited London in 1969 for a magazine story she proposed of “People Who Think They Look Like Other People,” and some of these humor-streaked images are included in the exhibition, such as “Winston Churchill look-alike, London, England.”
“Calder in India” at Ordovas, 25 Saville Row, through August 3
A first-time-in-the-West view of eight of the nine sculptures Calder created during a three-month sojourn in India in 1954 make this precise and historical exhibition one of the more exotic samplings in Mayfair. Fantastic mobiles and stabiles, including “Franji Pani” in painted aluminium sheet and steel wire from January 1955 and “Guava” from the same year, top the entries that originally came about by the patronage of the artist’s Indian hosts, Kamalini, Gautam, and Gira Sarabhai.
Doris Salcedo at White Cube Mason’s Yard, through June 30
The Columbian sculptor’s powerful memorials relating to some 1,500 young men murdered in remote areas of her native country come back to life in two haunting installation pieces, “A Flor de Piel,” a shroud-like floor piece composed of sutured rose petals resembling flayed skin, and “Plegaria Muda,” a 45-unit work comprised of coffin-sized tables of aged wood and thick slabs of earth.
Rudolf Stingel at Sadie Coles HQ at 9 Grosvenor Place through July 4
Situated in a listed Georgian townhouse crowned with a chandeliered ballroom, “Untitled,” the single, large-scale self-portrait painting is based on a formal photograph of the artist by Roland Bolego. It appears at one end of the grand room as a kind of altar piece, albeit one that has visible wine glass stains on the distressed surface. As in past site-specific installations, Stingel designed a vast, Oriental-style, mechanically stitched carpet that looks more like a pixilated echo of the real thing and feels notably artificial to walking on. Anyway, it’s worth the trip.