It is a hellish melee — a terrifyingly turbulent London, which William Hogarth and Hieronymus Bosch might have teamed up to concoct.
These unsettling drawings are in fact the work of Christie's Award-winner Louis Pohl Koseda, whose exhibition The Dawn of the Golden Age — on for a brief stint at Christie's in February — brings the societal issues of modern day London into discomforting fine-line focus.
Inspired by Hindu and Christian texts, alongside elements of his childhood in east London, Koseda envisions an imploding capital in which a form of "Last Judgement' plays out. Oxford Street shops are looted while Hare Krishnas dance about and an accordion is played. People are squeezed into Jobcentres — their homes on sticks like placards or bindles. Chunks of London's architecture are de-anchored from their foundations, floating off as if in a Christopher Nolan film.
In Capital at Risk: Drawing the City of London (see top image), the artist explains: "The City prides itself on competition so I decided to create a melee of eruption in the streets between Liverpool Street and Bank station, and the competition in the City of London's financial sector."
Each drawing throbs with confusion, frustration, delirium — a sense that London is tearing itself limb-from-limb, institution-from-institution. Figures are slurped up into the heavens, although these cacophonous canvases feel anything but redemptive.
Continues Koseda: "In this series, I'm using a fictional opera as a framework to show our complex society. But in a sense, this opera is real. Through the prism of the imagination, we get closer to truth. The pieces are drawn in a live dialogue with the world around us. By revealing how social systems are constructed, I am inviting the viewer to co-create them. Drawing is both action and research.
"Each work juxtaposes the intangible, spiritual, and mythological with the visceral, often brutal realities of human life."
Food for thought, alright — but after seeing this show you'll probably feel the urge to treat yourself to a comforting ice cream.
The Dawn of the Golden Age, 10-14 February, Christie's London, free
All images © Louis Pohl Koseda
