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:

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

Ask DALL-E to paint an abstraction and it’ll confidently produce a museum-worthy clone

Ignacy Czwartos, Polonia Uncensored, Venice ★★☆☆☆

Ignacy Czwartos

Polonia Uncensored

★★☆☆☆

Czwartos’ painting proves little and his sign-writer’s hand loses art history’s bet.

Open Group, The Polish pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Open Group

Repeat After Me II

★★★☆☆

The applause was rapturous. A sense of tragedy, however, was altogether missing.

Matthew Barney, SECONDARY at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Matthew Barney

SECONDARY: light lens parallax

★★★☆☆

Secondary turns the gallery into an American Football stadium. But all the seats in the house are the cheap seats and the game lacks a cheerleader.

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.

Gina Fischli, Love Love Love at Soft Opening ★★★★☆

Gina Fischli

Love Love Love

★★★★☆

What good it is to be best in show when the competition is lame, crooked, or outright fake?

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