Art By Kids Competes With Damien Hirst At London Gallery

Damien Hirst

Kenny Schachter presents artworks by kids and family friends alongside that of Hirst, Condo, and Hadid

Gallerist Kenny Schachter has put together your average exhibition of blue chip artists – Damien Hirst, George Condo, Zaha Hadid and Keith Tyson –, but with one major difference: the show also includes artwork made by himself,  his four sons (who range in age from 9 to 15), their school friends, and even the family’s car mechanic.

The ‘Friends & Family’ exhibition is inspired by that most pervasive of witticisms among art viewers – the old ‘My 9-year-old could have done that’. The show has been co-curated with his two teenage sons, with the work of the professional artists and the amateurs ‘seamlessly integrated, so you decide for yourself what’s good or not’.

When pressed on the question of ‘good art’, Schachter explained that ‘There is no difference between a fork, a spoon, a car, a painting. It’s about appreciating well-done things’: ‘I wanted ‘Friends & Family’ to come from somewhere other than profit. Art has become such a business — today it’s just another asset class, and it’s lost its sense of fun. People need to take it less seriously’.

Schacter’s 15-year-old son Adrian made a work called ‘Jar of Tears’, consisting of a glass jam jar filled with fragments of blue paper cut and shaped with a razor. His 9-year-old son Sage chose to make a painting on a tissue, and Schachter was moved by its ‘ephemeral’ quality. Guests at the opening included Jude Law and Sadie Frost, and their 15-year-old son Rafferty, and Bill Wyman and his three daughters, who all contributed artworks to the show. The Schachter children’s teachers and the parents also joined in. 

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