At Gagosian’s sleek Grosvenor Hill outpost, not far from Bond Street in London, is a punchy, rather masculine new exhibition that plays around with the detritus of the 20th century, both physical and philosophical, in ways guaranteed to make the visitor feel at once intoxicated and a touch queasy. Here are disembodied eyeballs and floating blond wigs. Here are distended sock dolls and plastic toy soldiers, greasily corrupt politicians and butcher’s shops that resemble murder scenes. Tube strike or not, on the day of my visit people were shopping as invincibly as ever in the streets outside the gallery. Passing them on my way in, I couldn’t help but think, furtively, of a dress I long to own. But no sooner was I inside the Gagosian’s vast spaces than such restlessness disappeared. The first thing I saw was a quiet reproach to my covetousness in the form of a watercooler that looked as if it had been turned suddenly to stone.
