The London premiere of Yugen was held on Friday evening at Chucs Serpentine – Serpentine Sackler Gallery, hosted by artistic director Hans Ulrich Obrist and CEO Yana Peel.

The Sackler is the most recent of the exhibition spaces managed by Serpentine Galleries in Kensington Gardens. The gallery was opened in 2013 as a “natural extension” of the original Serpentine Gallery, just a few minutes away. The project was made possible thanks to donations by the Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, hence its name, and Bloomberg Philanthropies.

The Sackler occupies the rooms of a former gunpowder store dating to 1805, to which an avant-corps designed by Zaha Hadid was added. As well as the exhibition spaces for temporary displays, the gallery also has a meeting space, a restaurant, a shop and staffrooms.

The preview and the artwork

“A conversation between spirituality and technology”, says Christie’s while Harper’s Bazaar Art calls it “the neverending story”. Yugen is the culmination of a creative synergy between Martha Fiennes, Salma Hayek and Magnus Fiennes, award-winning composer who wrote the music. The project has been produced by Tendercapital, a company created by Moreno Zani in the firm conviction that the combination of talent, integrity and innovation can make the difference with respect to the world of traditional finance. Moreno Zani explains that “Art and technology have been in constant dialogue since ancient times: Yugen, a combination of coding, CGI and film, is a further step in the exploration of this relationship, which opens up new visions for both fronts.”

The show

The presentation took place during annual contemporary art show Frieze London, the 16th edition of which was held in Regent’s Park in London between 5 and 7 October (at the same time as sister shows Frieze Masters and Frieze Sculpture). Back in June the British show revealed the introduction of a new section at the event, Social Works, focused on the female artists that “challenged the male-dominated market” in the 1980s. Social Works is the natural follow-up to Sex Works, a section at Frieze London 2017 dedicated to female artists whose works in the 1960s and 70s were considered too sexually explicit to be exhibited and subsequently censored.