Gilbert & George inaugural Hong Kong exhibition for London Gallery
White Cube has announced that its new gallery at 50 Connaught Road, Central in Hong Kong will open to the public on Friday 2nd March. The inaugural show will be the world premier of Gilbert & George’s ‘London Pictures’, the largest series of work by the artists to date. The illustrious British duo will attend the opening. White Cube, The London Gallery owned by Jay Jopling is one of the highest profile galleries on the international scene, with a roster that includes,Jake & Dinos Chapman • Chuck Close • Tracey Emin • Gilbert & George • Antony Gormley • Andreas Gursky • Marcus Harvey • Damien Hirst • Gary Hume • Anselm Kiefer • Christian Marclay • Marc Quinn • Joppling’s former wife Sam Taylor-Wood and Zhang Huan.
The space located in Hong Kong, follows Gagosian Gallery’s decision to open in Hong Kong last January and Art Basel’s takeover of the Hong Kong International Art Fair. The city continues to attract major players from the international art world. The gallery will present these artists to a new, lucrative Asian market, which recently overtook the UK as the second largest in the world, after the United States. The White Cube Gallery will redevelop a a 600 m2 space in the business district. No opening dates or exhibitions have been announced as of yet.
White Cube is located in two London locations Mason’s Yard and in Hoxton. The Mason’s Yard location opened in September 2006. It is located off Duke Street, St. James’s, home of the original White Cube gallery, on a site that was previously an electricity sub-station. Also designed by MRJ Rundell & Associates it is the first free-standing building to be built in the St James’s area for more than 30 years. The building houses a main, basement floor gallery which is a naturally lit, double-height space with a second gallery on street level providing 5000 ft² of exhibition space. White Cube, Mason’s Yard continues with an international, high profile programme of exhibitions and was launched with an inaugural exhibition by Gabriel Orozco. In April 2000, White Cube, Hoxton Square was set up as a second, larger gallery space in London’s East End. Housed in a 1920s light industrial building, and designed by architects MRJ Rundell and Associates, White Cube Hoxton Square has 2000 square feet of uninterrupted exhibition space.
White Cube was set up by Jay Jopling in 1993 as a project room for contemporary art. Although it was one of the smallest exhibition spaces in Europe, it was arguably one of most influential commercial galleries of the past decade. Situated on the second floor of 44 Duke Street, St James’s, one of London’s most traditional art dealing streets, White Cube, Duke Street was, literally, a simple white cube, a room within a room, designed by the architect Claudio Silvestrin.
The central concern when establishing the programme was to create an intimate space in which an artist could present a single important work of art or a coherent body of work within a focused environment, an idea that in some way, stemmed from the memorable experience of Walter de Maria’s ‘Earth Room’ in New York. The programme was singular among commercial galleries in that an artist was invited to exhibit only once. Since its inception, the gallery mounted exhibitions of work by many leading international and British artists.
The press preview will be on Thursday 1st March.
Photo: © ArtLyst 2011