Choon Mi Kim

ACID—FREEEE

★☆☆☆☆

On until 28 October 2023

Some forms of abstraction simply scream ‘my kid could have made that’. Choon Mi Kim’s work looks like the result of an idea the artist had as a sixteen-year-old while doodling with one of those multi-coloured BIC pens. Sadly, the idea only degraded with access to a canvas. The paintings are marked sparsely with long strokes that meet at acute angles in colour transitions that suggest the brushes gradually getting dirty. Occasionally, traces of another idea appear: gestures of calligraphy, some emoji.

The gallery’s method to compensate for this immaturity (Kim only left art school this Summer) is to give no context for the endeavour in the hope of cultivating an air of mystery. That may work commercially. But it’s not likely to help the work grow.


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

Jack O’Brien, The Reward at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Jack O'Brien

The Reward

★★☆☆☆

No narrative emerges from the tonnes of steel and plastic his work consumed

Anna Barriball at Frith Street Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Anna Barriball

New Drawings

★★☆☆☆

The eyes may be the windows of the soul. To make an aphorism of the reverse needs more than shadow-play.

Anastasia Pavlou, Reader at Hot Wheels ★★☆☆☆

Anastasia Pavlou

Reader, Part 2; The Reader Reads Words in Sentences

★★☆☆☆

In this game of aesthetic cognition, the idea which survives is of the artist thinking.

Material Rites at Gathering ★★★☆☆

Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together.

Dickon Drury at Seventeen ★★★☆☆

Dickon Drury

The Preceding Cart & POV: You are Beans

★★★☆☆

Painting needs prophets, Drury plays a jester.

Stuart Middleton, The Human Model at Carlos/Ishikawa ★★☆☆☆

Stuart Middleton

The Human Model

★★☆☆☆

An interest in material is core to this practice but Middleton mistrusts his instincts.

×