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:

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rozanskaite, Inflammation at Lithuanian pavilion Venice ★★★☆☆

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rožanskaité

Inflammation

★★★☆☆

One of the novelties in Venice is the artwork that looks good but on reflection isn’t.

Tommy Camerno, Delirious at Filet ★★☆☆☆

Tommy Camerno

Delirious

★★☆☆☆

What’s left of the show are stage props that feed adolescent imaginations with false memories of the long-finished party.

Nikita Gale, Blur Ballad at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Nikita Gale

Blur Ballad

★★☆☆☆

Even though the show brings together a few unusual tricks, they are disjointed and leave little for the eye to linger on.

Haegue Yang, Leap Year at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Haegue Yang

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.

Mike Kelley, Ghost and Sprit at Tate Modern ★★★☆☆

Mike Kelley

Ghost and Spirit

★★★☆☆

The challenge of curating a retrospective of a career as rich as Kelley’s is to build a narrative that both lay audiences and art historians can believe. Wood packs the show and pleases neither fully.  It’s remarkable that any artist’s…

Soufiane Ababri, Their mouths at Barbican ★★☆☆☆

Soufiane Ababri

Their mouths were full of bumblebees

★★☆☆☆

Ababri’s paintings for the Grindr generation are more cartoonish than they are from life.

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