Ebun Sodipo

An Ominous Presence

★★☆☆☆

On until 26 April 2025

The success of Sudipo’s block colour and found image collages relies on hardly anyone looking at them closely. The shimmering reflections from their crumpled aluminium foil backgrounds dazzle the dimly lit gallery. The effect is seductive, certainly, even within the white cube’s commercial austerity.

But look, and it’s all on the surface. Sheets of translucent filters barely conceal borrowed, if not stolen motives. Each layer contributes even less to the history Sudipo is building than last year’s memes.

The dealer, the gallery cleaner, maybe even the artist had a chance to intervene in these objects in bright light. That they did not is, indeed, ominous.


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

Women in Revolt! at Tate ★★★☆☆

Women in Revolt!

★★★☆☆

There’s a room for female labour, a corner for childbirth, one for black women, and a section for lesbians. This is as close to nuance as Tate gets today.

Condo: The Ambassadors at Wien at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆

Sophie Giraux, Albert Dietrich

Condo: The Ambassadors

★☆☆☆☆

Everything about this show feels lazy.

Alvaro Barrington, Grandma’s Land at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Alvaro Barrington

Grandma’s Land

★★★☆☆

The party slumps into a half-voiced political complaint and never recovers. This is what happens when instead of living culture, we ‘celebrate’ it.

RM, A Story Backwards at Auto Italia ★★☆☆☆

RM

A Story Backwards

★★☆☆☆

Having forgotten what the ‘dramatic’ in art stands for, visual artists today too often mistake hacked theory for stage directions.

Choon Mi Kim, ACID—FREEEE at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆

Choon Mi Kim

ACID—FREEEE

★☆☆☆☆

Some forms of abstraction simply scream ‘my kid could have made that’.

Aleksandar Denić, The Serbian pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Aleksandar Denić

Exposition Coloniale

★★★☆☆

Denić took the Biennale’s theme literally, as though he was not in on the art world joke.

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