Chelsea Thursday - 20:50

Modern art for the layman, or this layman at least, is a funny old thing (or a funny new thing as when it gets old it ceases to be modern). Some of it I like and some of it I don't. Even less of it I understand. I approach it with an open mind and what ever I come away with or don't as the case may be, I try not to think, "that's not art!" or "you're having a laugh!" (I do quite often compromise with a, "Hmm" though). Most galleries the size of the Saatchi galley have a few things that I really like and few that I don't but for me the prize in the saatchi gallery just now goes to Mr Richard Wilson's 20:50

It's down in the basement and is an entire room flooded to about waist height with used sump oil (20:50 is the name of the grade of oil I'm told). It facinating to look at. You know it's a couple of feet deep but it just looks like a polished black floor which reflects the walls and windows (it can't be that much of a basement then) perfectly only in a slightly different shade. Smells a little too. It's viewed from a gallery but you're supposed to be able to go down a walkway into the middle of it - unfortunately this has been closed of - perhaps people have been unable to resist the temptation of dabbling a little bit in the edge to produce ripples when they're so close to it.

Of walking down the walkway, the catalogue says, "Though this altered perspective 20:50's phantasmical aura is enhanced, amplifying the disorientating and mesmerising experience of the space, and further confounding physical logic". It's a wonderful installation and the catalogue description....well....hmmm!