The Shape of Things to Come is as much a tagline as a title, and suggests some of the thinking behind the Saatchi Gallery’s first sculpture-only exhibition. Why did gallery owner Charles Saatchi choose this phrase? Perhaps to remind us of his role as ‘tastemaker’, or to try again to influence the route that sculpture is taking. Yet we are not looking at a new generation: most works are by long-established artists, such as John Baldessari, and the themes are familiar.

The twenty sculptors from London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, among other cities, have cut, arranged, , sewed and moulded their works out of horse hide, expandable foam, quartz crystals and even a sweater belonging to the Bolivian president. A vast elephant, crushed cars and the gentle giant journeymen are more like attractions than sculpture; the show can be enjoyed by children and tourists as well as the initiated.

Themes of the human body recur throughout the show, with works touching upon its decay, excretions, grotesqueness and decadence, and so too on the loneliness of the human experience. Our sexual nature is made to seem decadent and controversial, and the pieces that tackle this theme in particular have an ‘unfinished’ aesthetic.

Are these expressions of the artists’ views? Are Folkert de Jong’s saltimbanques and dancing men with no arms, for example, a metaphor for human society? They wear expressions of hopelessness on their faces, and in the sculptor’s other work, a father teaches his son to shoot a bow and arrow.

By including very few politicised messages, personal expressions or straightforward representation, Saatchi seems to be saying that the future lies (and perhaps somewhat relies on) the unique and undeniable effect that the physical presence of a large sculpture in a room has on us, and the material investigations into the possibilities of the three-dimensional art form.

Until Oct 16

Elizabeth Morrow