Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

On until 28 September 2024

A wall built from Harlequin-patterned concrete blocks serves as the backdrop for a pile of black aluminium cans. They look like an out-of-scale González-Torres candy pile but lack any source of tension. Elsewhere, a structure that could make for a children’s climbing frame smoothly blends steel rebar with concrete. It is endearingly crude but somehow too easy to look at. One might want to touch or mount it, but the materials’ soft, steady surfaces dissuade. Even the traces of rust on the grid appear self-conscious and uninviting.

Rothschild has made assemblies of such material perfection, blended pastel gradients, and blemishless extrusions for many years. Her high-spec fabrication inspires desire. But without points of contrast, these sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason. This work is “resolved” far past the point of an ideal, saturating the senses and leaving nothing to the imagination.


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

Liam Gillick, The Sleepwalkers at Maureen Paley ★★★☆☆

Liam Gillick

The Sleepwalkers

The Sleepwalkers

★★★☆☆

Gillick’s practice lacks obviously consistent character, save for it is sparseness of means and the ungraspability of its referents.

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

Haegue Yang

Leap Year

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.

Aria Dean, Abattoir at ICA ★★★☆☆

Aria Dean

Abattoir

Abattoir

★★★☆☆

Visuals of her own making overpower the artist.

Harmony Korine, Aggressive Dr1fter Part II at Hauser & Wirth ★★☆☆☆

Harmony Korine

Aggressive Dr1fter Part II

Aggressive Dr1fter Part II

★★☆☆☆

The garish colours which may have carried the story in cinema here are unfitting of their new medium.

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

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

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

Ithaca at Herald St ★★★★☆

Christopher Aque, Alekos Fassianos, Luigi Ghirri, Jessie Stevenson, George Tourkovasilis

Ithaca

Ithaca

★★★★☆

This show drips with affectation that wouldn’t survive a minute tomorrow.

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