Review: David Hockney: Lightroom, Bigger and Closer in London

virtual reality. NFTs. artificial intelligence. robotics. Today, contemporary art seems saturated with technology. Creatives seem to be vying with each other to incorporate new technology developments into ever-greater projects.

It may look like a new scientific gold rush, but it’s nothing new. Since the Baroque, artists have incorporated contemporary ideas and techniques into their work, but 20th-century art can be mapped directly to scientific advances, from futurism to cybernetics to new media. .

Such works have always coexisted with, rather than competing with, traditional sculptural and painting techniques. Many artists enjoy the fusion of tradition and technology, analog and digital.

David Hockney is a great example. Renowned for his pop-influenced painting career, he never shied away from technical experimentation, whether it be his photomontages, his multi-camera videos, or his recent endeavors. drawing on ipadRecognizing the historical antecedents of such practices, he also explored through books and documentaries as well as his own visual experiments on perspective and how the eye reads information, Old We have studied the historical use of the camera obscura by masters.

Such research is featured in the opening chapter of David Hockney: Bigger & Closer (not small & far away), the first presentation at Lightroom, London’s newest entertainment space. walls and floors. For less than an hour, visitors are immersed in a whistle-stopping journey through Hockney’s practice, matched with narration montaged from new interviews with the artist and archived interviews with him. It’s a documentary, a visual installation, a technical spectacle, but with clichés – is it art?

Hockney is not the only artist to have built such an immersive experience around their output.There are now two separate Monet experiences touring the United States.Van Gogh is treating on three continents simultaneously. is receiving Frida Kahlo and Diego Riviera are in Washington DC after a run in London. “Dali: Cybernetics” can be experienced in both Barcelona and London. Hockney stands apart from this excellent line-up.Not only was he the only living artist among them, but he was heavily involved in the production and design of the show. As itself is one of his works.

The benefits of such projects for producers are obvious. Being able to exhibit at the same time in countless places. The possibility of engaging with a wider audience who may not have considered museums or who do not want to battle large exhibition crowds to see the work up close. And at £25 he could probably make a good financial return in a pop where visitors are unlikely to stay longer than one loop of a pre-recorded show.But a living artist What do you get out of such a packaged presentation?

Over the course of three years, Hockney worked with designer 59 Productions to develop preparatory ideas from his home in Normandy and refine the work in the form of model boxes before coming to London for the final show at a Howarth Tompkins-designed venue. Supervised finishing. While an artist’s work is usually diffused through the framing of the curator and diffused at organizational arm’s length from the creator, “Bigger & Closer” is a much more hagiographical approach than the traditional solo exhibition, It will be released at a breakneck pace that will take you no time. Like a gallery setting, to immerse yourself in and think deeply about the work.