Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

Curated by Lars Bang Larsen
On until 8 December 2024

It would take a visitor unfamiliar with Raven Row’s fetish for the 1970s until the heat death of the universe to understand what this exhibition is for. It assembles dozens of supposedly anti-temporal works that barely share a time zone, let alone partisan concerns, folding them into the present as though that could do some magic. Falhström’s 50-year-old study of globalism thus sits next to a strand of ‘mental health’ works by Podolski and Daučíková. An unimpressive archive of transhumanism dug up by Knauf has little echo. Next, some solidarity banners stitched by Zapatera Negra and a climate change corner with bits of glass by Schmidt.

The exhibition guide calls all this “radical”: if time were a social construct, things might have well been different. Proving the subjunctive useless, however, the gallery’s time-capsule top-floor flat hosts an exhibition-in-exhibition called “How to Eat a Rolex”. It may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

The curator seems unfatigued. The show’s time-blindness peaks in Agirregoikoa’s idiotic pencil animation which poses Swan Lake as a Nazi anthem. This is “how culture is turned into an ideology”. Good to know that’s settled.


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

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

Jennifer Bartlett

In the House

★★★★☆

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

Rose Finn-Kelcey, Suit of Lights at Kate MacGarry ★★★★☆

Rose Finn-Kelcey

Suit of Lights

★★★★☆

Local-art-centre retro exposes the breakdown of the feminist art project.

Kevin Brisco Jr, But I Hear There Are New Suns at Union Pacific ★★☆☆☆

Kevin Brisco Jr

But I Hear There Are New Suns

★★☆☆☆

I didn’t get to see this show. Perhaps for the best.

Celia Hempton, Transplant at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Celia Hempton

Transplant

★★★☆☆

Sense finally returns only outside the gallery.

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Wilhelm Sasnal

★★★☆☆

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

Max Hooper Schneider, Twilight at the Earth’s Crust at Maureen Paley ★★☆☆☆

Max Hooper Schneider

Twilight at the Earth’s Crust

★★☆☆☆

Mad Max meets Waterworld in a crossover sequel conceived by a film studio’s marketing department.

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