Never Touch A Painting When It's Wet

'Tell people that there's an invisible man in the sky

who created universe, and the vast majority will

believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have 

to touch it to be sure."

George Carlin

This is the Saatchi Gallery.

Possibly my favourite gallery I've ever been too.

I love art, I love galleries and museums, I love public art and street art.

I'm one of these people that can spend a whole day in the portrait gallery and forget what the weather is outside.

I regularly visit the Saatchi Gallery, I think the layout is brilliant; big light rooms with no ropes or acrylic glass in front of the artwork. There is rarely any reflection so the art can be admired from every angle.

Today there was two main exhibitions on, equally as good. First the Pangaea: New Art from Africa and Latin America (Until 31st Aug).

Immediately when you walk in this piece by Rafael Gomezbarros hits you, it's more overwhelming than in the pictures. It's kind of like a horror film, trapped in a room with giant ants crawling over every wall, or the scene from Harry Potter and the Chambers of Secrets in the dark forest with the spiders. They are quite lifelike, considering you can see the ropes tying them together, and you keep watching suspecting that one will come alive, even know you know it's impossible.

I think I must of been the only person to go in there and think 'this will make a good textiles print'.

I came across these three photographs by Dillon Marsh, I don't know why but I was really attracted to them. Maybe it was the weird resemblance with birds I imagined as I looked upon them.

Here are just a few more pictures from the Pangaea exhibition I liked. However I couldn't resist a selfie when taking a picture of (ironically) another picture. This was one of the rare occasion I've seen a photograph in the Saatchi with a plastic panel in the frame (you see what I mean about reflections in galleries now).

I was surprised to see an artist was brave enough to leave five footballs as part as an installation in the middle of the floor during the easter holidays for children at school. I could imagine the panic in a mother's face when trying to educate her son with culture when he starts playing keepy up with an art piece.

Up on the highest level in the Saatchi were two statues that really caught my attention. I have to admit I've always favourited art capturing the human form, for example Degas, Da Vinci, Bernini, Jenny Saville and Rembrandt. 

Even though the first statue looks like she is possessed there is a beauty about the statue, maybe not aesthetically but through the muscle definition, shadow and detail worked into the marble and wax.

You can really feel a sense of weight and life when looking at how she is slumped on the chair. It reminded me of Bernini's sculpture, The Rape of Proserpina (for those non-art lover, "the rape" isn't actually rape in the context we see today, so no it isn't a statue depicting modern day rape).

I found out afterwards this sculpture is called 'Regarding the Pain of the Other'. Virgile Ittah has captured this effortlessly, the way the wax has dripped down the legs giving the illusion of weak legs maybe illustrating her unstableness or her fragile state.

The second of the two is 'Dreams are Guilty, Absolute and Silent by Fire'. It's as if she has made the sculpture and melted it. The wax legs kind of resemble the skeleton, like she is breaking apart.

So overall I consider today was a very thoughtful day.