Despite indications to the contrary, it brings this critic little pleasure to disparage the aspirations of a young gallery. But either the curator or the quinquagenarian artist should have known better than to show off this nonsense.
Ruscha’s paintings are a cross between a cartoonist’s representation of an LSD trip and an AI’s “artful” arrangement of twee California colours. They barely make up for their design with their thankfully modest size and number.
The gallery’s invitation promises Oskar Fischinger, Scott Bartlett, and even David Hockney. It is a blessing that it stopped short of citing Stella. Ruscha’s geometric repetitions, waves, and colour fields might be the thing in California’s forever hippie junkyard. In London, they are not Bardawil’s first investment into egregiously mediocre painting. This critic hopes they are the last.
