ABOVE: Detail from Can you see the real me (1999), a work by YBA Saatchi discovery Richard Patterson. He will soon exhibit a work which continues a series that was destroyed in a calamitous warehouse fire.

Richard Patterson took five months each on a series of paintings he called “Culture Stations” in the late 1990s; three of those monumental collage/paint works were purchased by the Black Hole of British Art, Charles Saatchi and placed for safekeeping in the London warehouse Momart. Then the warehouse burned down, taking Mr. Patterson’s paintings, among many other valuable pieces, with it.

Now, Patterson will continue the Culture Stations series with Back at the Dealership Culture Station No. 5, which will be unveiled at the Timothy Taylor Gallery on Saturday. The Independent interviews him in today’s issue and reports that Patterson initially considered exactly reproducing the original paintings but scrapped the idea because it would take too long. Also, whereas the originals were completed through a detailed and lengthy process of layered collage and painting, the new version has been assisted by computer. This doesn’t actually sound like a continuation of the old style, given that the methodology has changed so much. It sounds like something new and interesting, certainly, but this sounds like the artistic equivalent of a Brady Bunch reunion movie: the characters are all there but the magic’s gone.

LINK : The Independent > ‘Young British Artist’ rakes Momart’s ashes