The Fifer

★★☆☆☆

On until 18 February 2024

What connects mystical runes, sublime sounds, hypernatural birds, and the very middle of Europe? Wrong answers only, as the meme goes, because “nothing” is obvious. Narkevičius’ constellation of sculpture, photography, and sound installation, topped for good measure with a 3D film gimmick, pulls in too many directions. 

This luck-of-the-draw curating is unsatisfying and disruptively confusing. It forces the eye to find comfort in the Lithuanian’s already familiar and predictable 1997 video on “the post-Soviet era”. This modest work, lightly twitching the Iron Curtain, inadvertently becomes a centrepiece. In the age of the decolonial, this is as quaint as it is outmoded, and the contextual vacuum of this cutting room floor helps no one.


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

Nikita Gale, Blur Ballad at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Blur Ballad

★★☆☆☆

Even though the show brings together a few unusual tricks, they are disjointed and leave little for the eye to linger on.

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

Sin Wei Kin, Portraits at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Portraits

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition combines the most vulgar of all art school tropes: juvenile narcissism, NFT kitsch, and mindless referentialism.

I’m so gay for you at Miłość ★★☆☆☆

I'm so gay for you

★★☆☆☆

This “celebration of queerness” is no orgy

Jenkin van Zyl, Dance of the Sleepwalkers at Edel Assanti ★★★☆☆

Dance of the Sleepwalkers

★★★☆☆

Ring 1 for “Grief”, and it’s flat 7 for “Garbage”.

Noah Davis at The Barbican ★★★☆☆

★★★☆☆

Davis’ canvases give an account of time more sensitively than the Victorian portrait photograph

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