“The Art of Chess” at London’s Saatchi Gallery

Tags: Chess, Collaborations, London, Saatchi Gallery, Upcoming Exhibitions

The Art of Chess began at Somerset House in London in 2003: 5 chess sets were commissioned by RS&A to be displayed alongside historical ones created by such individuals as Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, Yoko Ono and Man Ray.

Yayoi Kusama, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Paul McCarthy and Maurizio Cattelan contributed their own inventions to the exhibition, which became a huge success. From there, the commissions grew.

Barbara Kruger, Tom Friedman, Damien Hirst, Tunga, Rachel Whiteread and Matthew Ronay added their contributions in 2005; Tracey Emin in 2008; and Paul Fryer, Gavin Turk, Oliver Clegg, and Alastair Mackie in 2009.

Nearly 10 years after its inception, the Saatchi Gallery is displaying all 15 chess sets that came about from these commissions, each one a brainchild of some of the world’s leading contemporary artists.

The exhibition will also show a new commission by British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, who applied their fascination with dead animals to create a chess board made of a hand-carved tree stump and chess pieces fashioned out of mummified animals.

According to a press release, “This unique exhibition demonstrates that the game [of chess] has lost none of its inspirational power in the 21st century and continues to provide an intriguing starting point for artistic expression centuries after the game was invented.”

The exhibition will be on view from September 8 – October 3, 2012.

[via Saatchi Gallery]

Photo by Norbert Schoerner, Courtesy RS&A