Adriano Costa

ax-d. us. t

★★★☆☆

On until 13 July 2024

Form triumphs over detritus. Items bought at flea markets, found under the sofa cushion, or rescued from the back of a white van landed in Costa’s studio where they assumed new shapes with the help of a glue gun, some duct tape, and the odd rivet. These tabletop curios with titles like Public vendetta and Slum mania dominate the exhibition. The slight contrasts between their scales, colours, and textures invite questions of their provenance but offer no useful answers, save for the recognition that such junkyard aesthetics has been a contemporary art trope forever.

A different origin story comes with a series of bronze objects that break the exhibition’s rhythm. The bronze casting process calls for materials like plaster or silicone to pour negative voids of the final, positive sculpture. Costa splinters this and rescues the moulds from his workshop’s waste pile. This time, however, doesn’t merely upcycle them for the gallery but casts the voids into bronze positives. This iteration elevates this form of ‘art workshop’ detritus over the other, truly ‘found’ matter.

The gallery text plays up the work’s site specificity. It’s wrong to. Costa’s found objects are specific to only themselves, and even more so when they are the mirrors of their bronze process siblings. This treatment earns their reprieve from the waste compactor’s claw. Why some are more worthy than others is left unexplained.


notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

Lydia Gifford

Low Anchored Cloud

★★☆☆☆

Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

What Is It Like? at Arebyte ★★☆☆☆

Anna Bunting-Branch, Choy Ka Fai, Damara Inglês, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Lawrence Lek, Kira Xonorika

What Is It Like?

★★☆☆☆

What does it feel like for an intelligence to be artificial?

Haegue Yang, Leap Year at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Haegue Yang

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.

Eddie Ruscha, Seeing Frequencies at Cedric Bardawil ★☆☆☆☆

Eddie Ruscha

Seeing Frequencies

★☆☆☆☆

But either the curator or the artist should have known better.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Sprüth Magers ★★★★☆

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

★★★★☆

A police procedural turns into a drinking game of Foucauldian power analysis.

Trackie McLeod, FRUIT II at The Bomb Factory ★★☆☆☆

Trackie McLeod

FRUIT II

★★☆☆☆

“Working-class” and “queer” appear in the collateral as obligatory. What doesn’t is “white”.

×