David Muenzer

Teen

★★★☆☆

On until 23 February 2025

Muenzer’s study of moody teenagers staged in a messy bedroom is so self-referential that one wonders if the artist might ever escape their world himself. His subjects are locked-in kidults hiding from view in bubbles transparent only enough to show off their indignant vexation with the world. The artist poses his heroes ironically on play swings, at the mall, or at the Thanksgiving family dinner that they’re about to ruin for everyone. They relax only when they illicitly sneak into that filthy bed.

All this would be annoying to this middle-aged critic, except this gallery actually is someone’s messy bedroom most nights of the week. Final Hot Desert is a transplant from Utah now seeking its fortunes in Hackney. Muenzer, it turns out, is the West Coast art establishment’s hapless darling. But in this DIY setting, the whole endeavour is so quaint that it’s almost charming. Pity only that an atrocious exhibition essay betrays these kids’ desperate ambition to graduate into adulthood.


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

Tarek Lakhrissi, Spit at Nicoletti ★★★☆☆

Tarek Lakhrissi

Spit

★★★☆☆

Writing poetry is hard enough.

Siobhan Liddell, Been and Gone at Hollybush Gardens ★★☆☆☆

Siobhan Liddell

Been and Gone

★★☆☆☆

A twee aesthetics native to a grandmother’s mantlepiece collection of tourist souvenirs and devotional figurines.

Alexis Kyle Mitchell: The Goal of Our Health at Peer ★★☆☆☆

Alexis Kyle Mitchell

The Goal of Our Health

★★☆☆☆

When Adam Curtis stopped narrating his ‘documentaries’, some stories are wasted breath.

Cherry Bomb! at Miłość

Kate Burling, Anna Choutova, Douglas Cantor, Nettle Grellier, Gosia Kołdraszewska, Lydia Pettit, Olivia Sterling, Sophie Vallance Cantor

Cherry Bomb!

★★☆☆☆

An exhibition about… cherries confuses Chekhov with Nabokov.

The Imaginary Institution of India at Barbican ★★★★★

The Imaginary Institution of India

★★★★★

How does a curator tell an unfamiliar history yet evade the museum’ didacticism and the audience’s dulled expectations? Jhaveri’s ambitious review of India’s testing decades at the end of the 20th century could easily have been a torturous sermon: the…

Julia Maiuri, Yesterday & The End at Workplace ★☆☆☆☆

Julia Maiuri

Yesterday & The End

★☆☆☆☆

One can only imagine that some unconscious loathing of postmen motivated this project.

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