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:

Hannah Black: HUSH MR GIANT at Arcadia Missa ★☆☆☆☆

Hannah Black

HUSH MR GIANT

★☆☆☆☆

What’s wrong with rights makes no right with painting.

Sosa Joseph, Pennungal at David Zwirner ★★★★★

Sosa Joseph

Pennungal: Lives of women and girls

★★★★★

The night, finally, recognises despair and witnesses infanticide.”

Oisín Byrne, Not Marble at Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Oisín Byrne

Not Marble

★★☆☆☆

Byrne has a type. Or rather, he’ll paint you into one.

Veronica Ryan: Multiple Conversations at Whitechapel Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Veronica Ryan

Multiple Conversations

★★☆☆☆

The impulse at play is that repetition makes up for an idea by sheer volume. It doesn’t.

Open Group, The Polish pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Open Group

Repeat After Me II

★★★☆☆

The applause was rapturous. A sense of tragedy, however, was altogether missing.

TJ Wilcox, Hiding in Plain Sight at Sadie Coles HQ ★★☆☆☆

TJ Wilcox

Hiding in Plain Sight

★★☆☆☆

Vanity proceeds in circles.

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