The Britannia Street space is huge. The biggest room is 28 meters long and almost 6 meters high, which makes it perfect for large sculptures and ambitious projects. It opened in 2004 with a show of ten big paintings by Cy Twombly. Then, Martin Kippenberger's two big sculptures were shown in another show. A spokesman for the gallery says that the choice was made because the landlord is making changes to the north London building. Instead of moving to a new location, Gagosian is building a new outdoor platform for large-scale sculpture that will "continue and expand the tradition" of Britannia Street. This new project, called Gagosian Open, will start in October to meet with Frieze London. A spokesman says that art will be put up in public places in London. "It] will give artists the chance to show ambitious projects outside of the walls of the gallery, and it will give new audiences the chance to see amazing works of art in completely different settings, from places that were previously inaccessible to public spaces all over the city."
It's a new approach for Gagosian, who has made a fortune with standard brick-and-mortar galleries, even when the economy was bad. During the crisis of the early 1990s, he reopened his gallery in Los Angeles. In 2007, just before the world economy crashed, he opened a gallery in Rome. Since then, he has opened three shops in Paris and two in the Swiss cities of Basel and Gstaad. In 2021, he shut down his shop in San Francisco. In recent years, there have been questions about the Britannia Street space, which was once home to famous shows by Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, and Cecily Brown in 2006. American Pastoral, a show that opened in early 2020 and put 19th-century masters up against big names from today like Ed Ruscha and Roy Lichtenstein, was not as well received. Alistair Sooke of the Telegraph said that going there is a bit like falling into the gallery's stockroom. Between April 2021 and April 2022, Gagosian gave Damien Hirst the keys to the gallery. Hirst put on a year-long run of shows of his own work, including Natural History, which was all about the artist's animals that had been preserved in formaldehyde.
Jean Dubreil