Pierre d'Alancaisez

Andreas Angelidakis

Escape Room

Greek pavilion , Venice

★★☆☆☆

On until 22 November 2026

Is Greece ok? Their pavilions of late have been dingy and gloomy, casting the motherland itself as a dark den. Emerging from it is increasingly doubtful. Angelidakis’s Escape Room stages Plato’s cave for “the current political climate”, where the shadows are Hitler, and Trump holds the keys. Maybe Greek love is the salvation! (Or something.)

Angelidakis mixes nightclub, 4chan, HIV, and MAGA imagery, casting the visitor as the confounding video silhouette. Greece is half-dungeon, half beautiful ruin, all narcissistic psychosexual babble ignorant of its history. This lair might be fun to dance in to Make Plato’s Cave Great Again. But is that a civics lesson?

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

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.

Claire Fontaine: Show Less at Mimosa House ★★☆☆☆

Claire Fontaine

Show Less

★★☆☆☆

Repeat these mantras enough, and the lie becomes art.

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

Anna Glantz, Lichens at Approach ★★★☆☆

Anna Glantz

Lichens

★★★☆☆

The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 

Yuki Nakayama, After the Rain at A.I. Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Yuki Nakayama

After the Rain

★☆☆☆☆

Can an installation be too site-specific?

Ghada Amer, QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON at Goodman ★★☆☆☆

Ghada Amer

QR CODES REVISITED—LONDON

★★☆☆☆

This invites a game of proofreading, in hope that Amer maliciously inserted a greengrocer’s apostrophe into de Beauvoir’s mind.

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