This exhibition did not quite live up to my high expectations. It had been quite strongly hyped in both the RA and Tate magazines including, in the latter, an extensive interview with the artist.
The work is all figurative but at the same time much is heavily conceptual. For example the opening room is taken up with Rejects 1994-2014, a collection of 20 portrait heads pinned to the wall. There is less need to scrutinise each one separately than take in the gestalt and ponder their collective significance. The same comment, in my view applies to Black Drawings 1991-2, a collection of some 98 portrait heads of black people.
There are, of course, plenty of individual works of individuals and clearly each is interesting and executed with considerable thought and in a thought provoking way. For example, the pairing of Naomi Cambell and Princess Diana, Osama bin Laden and his son, and the Crucifixion - Solo. There are also a few group works such as the large The Wall, showing Jews standing near the partition wall.
So, each work on its own, is interesting with a good deal of thought behind it and a need to be understood. Yet, to me, going round the exhibition felt like a bit of an intellectual exercise - Ah yes, I understand that one now; next.
I'm sure I'll go again but I'm not sure it is an exhibition that will stay with me - like the Richter did, for example.
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