Calla Henkel & Max Pitegoff, I.W. Payne

Downtown

★★★★☆

On until 22 June 2024

The Kingly Street cupboard which hosts this Margate outfit’s pop-up barely has room for three artists. With two gallerists on site, it leaves little space for breath and even less for context. 

For once, that’s for the better. Henke and Pitegoff’s black-and-white photographs of leather handbags do for the vaginal labia what Mapplethorpe’s vegetables did for the penis. Seeing them this close up – there is no other way – invokes a violence that’s far from the gentle joke of an O’Keeffe desert flower.

Next to this macabre gynaecological luxury product line-up, Payne’s near human-size cardboard silhouette jokingly riffs on a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon. Move too close and its spikes will poke your eyes. Move one step back and you’ll hit a steel column. 

This little assembly would make the perfect décor for a court waiting room, unsettling any might-be villain. It may also be a great way to air yet keep close art’s most captivating defects. 


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

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward, the Bolivian pavilion in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

looking to the futurepast, we are treading forward

★☆☆☆☆

The contemporary is of no interest to a nation whose future is yet to be dug out from the ground.

Matthew Barney, SECONDARY at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Matthew Barney

SECONDARY: light lens parallax

★★★☆☆

Secondary turns the gallery into an American Football stadium. But all the seats in the house are the cheap seats and the game lacks a cheerleader.

Klara Lidén, Square Moon at Sadie Coles ★★☆☆☆

Klara Lidén

Square Moon

★★☆☆☆

This isn’t Times Square in a blackout.

Oh, the Storm at Rodeo ★☆☆☆☆

Oh, the Storm

★☆☆☆☆

This exhibitions is trying to explain the concept of ‘crazy paving’ to a blind man. It’s impossible to tell where a work ends and the wall begins.

Bruno Zhu, License to Live at Chisenhale ★☆☆☆☆

Bruno Zhu

License to Live

★☆☆☆☆

Faced with so little, one longs for an even emptier room.

Christine Ay Tjoe, Lesser Numerator at White Cube ★★☆☆☆

Christine Ay Tjoe

Lesser Numerator

★★☆☆☆

Aj Tjoe’s paintings could make great scenic backdrops to a David Attenborough documentary on the life of wild rodents

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