Erick Meyenberg

Nos marchábamos, regresábamos siempre

★☆☆☆☆

On until 24 November 2024

The exhibition guide outlines Meyenberg’s unremarkably winding family lineage and, without much explanation, the tale of a particular family reunion dinner. It makes use of personal and national stereotypes and stories so complex that even a seasoned historian would reach for a pencil and then for the truth serum. 

Whatever the reason or purpose of this confusion, it’s not to be found in the gallery where an oversized dining table stands as a memento of this fateful event. White linens and ceramic debris of plates, glass, and foodstuffs pay testament to a feud, but also to life because clay’s wonky stature is an inalienable feature of this millenia-old medium.

This would have been fine. But Meyenberg needlessly exalts his non-experience by sending a camera around this table-top diorama and drowns the family scene in gratuitous projections. Rather than add, they undermine his story, making an exhibition that distrust its own medium and a tale that quenches curiosity.


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

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.

Vinca Petersen, Me, Us and Dogs at Edel Assanti ★★★☆☆

Vinca Petersen

Me, Us and Dogs

★★★☆☆

Close up, Petersen’s innocents today conjure ideas of redneck resistance. At scale, of state-marketed utopia. The middle ground is envy.

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.

Christopher Wool at Gagosian ★★★☆☆

Christopher Wool

★★★☆☆

No room for the eye, no way to follow the line.

Nicola Singh: Sincere Seeker at Cubitt ★★☆☆☆

Nicola Singh

Sincere Seeker

★★☆☆☆

What would it take for art to look like something, anything once more?

Pope.L, Hospital at South London Gallery ★★★☆☆

Pope.L

Hospital

★★★☆☆

This project lands in the joke section of Animal Farm and not as a prophecy of the Jan 6th insurrection.

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