Amanda Wall

Femcel

★★★☆☆

On until 22 December 2023

In Wall’s femcel portraits, despair is sexy. Larger than life and rendered in Insta colours that could have been the choice of an image AI, her women perch at the bed’s end, squat by the wardrobe, and rest at the kitchen table. They’re bent out of proportion, showing off their skinny asses to the collector’s delight. Their boob tubes are tight, their shorts short. They play tired, scared, and helpless, just like you like them. They pulled these faces for you before. You will come back for more again.

The self-taught and presumably terminally online Wall may have experienced the faux emancipation of an e-girl first-hand. But her paintings are too brash and denatured to win in the battle over the 21st-century female body. Maybe sex work is the only work left in a world with no sex and universal online income. But there’s no dignity in paint when the arc of art history tends to “show hole”.


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

Victor Man: The Absence That We Are at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Victor Man

The Absence That We Are

★★★☆☆

Man’s colours are only a small nudge of the wheel from Tretchikoff’s infamous portrait of the Chinese girl.

Marina Abramović, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas ★☆☆☆☆

Marina Abramović

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

★☆☆☆☆

Abramović wants to destroy all performance and all women until she holds the monopoly over stage death.

Helen Johnson, Opening at Pilar Corrias ★☆☆☆☆

Helen Johnson

Opening

★☆☆☆☆

This is the work of a mind that, having needlessly spent years in therapy, became hooked on ennui or of an artist who wasted time misreading Lacan.

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?

Firelei Báez, A Midnight’s Dream at South London Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Firelei Báez

A Midnight's Dream

★☆☆☆☆

Such kitsch might have been fine in a spinster auntie’s bedroom. In the gallery, it is a cruel trick.

Ed Webb-Ingall, A Bedroom for Everyone at PEER ★☆☆☆☆

Ed Webb-Ingall

A Bedroom for Everyone

★☆☆☆☆

How can art improve the lives of communities? Wrong answers only.

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