Carla Åhlander, Aaron Amar Bhamr

Holding Places

★★★☆☆

On until 27 September 2024

Despite their formal simplicity, Åhlander’s photographs can build an atmosphere. It’s late summer at the family’s lake holiday cottage. The sun shines through the curtains, the building creaks in the breeze, and lunch will be ready soon. Together with the gallery’s fit-out – of brass trimmings, dark carpet, mirrors – the illusion is as good as complete. 

Then Amar Bhamr’s art handler’s readymade breaks it, hard, revealing the whole scene to be make-believe. But not before this artist, too, litters the floor with traces of the season’s turn, thus showing himself to be as sentimental as the rest of us. 


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

Nicola Singh: Sincere Seeker at Cubitt ★★☆☆☆

Nicola Singh

Sincere Seeker

★★☆☆☆

What would it take for art to look like something, anything once more?

Michaël Borremans, The Monkey at David Zwirner ★★★★★

Michaël Borremans

The Monkey

★★★★★

Borremans toys with his subjects, his audience, and with art history.

Deimantas Narkevičus, The Fifer at Maureen Paley ★★☆☆☆

Deimantas Narkevičus

The Fifer

★★☆☆☆

In the age of the decolonial, this is as quaint as it is outmoded

Ebun Sodipo, An Ominous Presence at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Ebun Sodipo

An Ominous Presence

★★☆☆☆

Look, and it’s all on the surface.

Jennifer Bartlett, In the House at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Jennifer Bartlett

In the House

★★★★☆

“Sky”, “roof”, “31”, a mantra turns into paint.

Tesfaye Urgessa, The Ethiopian Pavilion in Venice ★★★★★

Tesfaye Urgessa

Prejudice and Belonging

★★★★★

Urgessa’s figures are contorted in love, death, or merely life.

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