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:

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji at Sweetwater and Studio M ★★★★★

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

Aesthetic cognition or crossword puzzles only rarely bring such perverse pleasure.

Yorgos Prinos, Prologue to a Prayer at Hot Wheels ★★★★☆

Yorgos Prinos

Prologue to a Prayer

★★★★☆

Prinos’ frames are precise, tight, and formal, as though the street were his studio.

Aziza Kadyri, the Uzbekistan pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Aziza Kadyri

Don't Miss the Cue

★★★★☆

This dissonance might be intentional. If it isn’t, so much for the better.

Celia Hempton, Transplant at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Celia Hempton

Transplant

★★★☆☆

Sense finally returns only outside the gallery.

Tamara Henderson, Green in the Grooves at Camden Art Centre ★★★★☆

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome.

France-Lise McGurn, Strawberry at Massimodecarlo ★☆☆☆☆

France-Lise McGurn

Strawberry

★☆☆☆☆

McGurn has created the visual equivalent of elevator music.

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