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:

Hany Armanious, Circle Square at Phillipa Reid ★★☆☆☆

Hany Armanious

Circle Square

Circle Square

★★☆☆☆

The lightness of being can turn unbearable.

A light here required a shadow at Maximillian William ★★★☆☆

Grant Falardeau, Rimantė Mikulovičiūtė, Benjamin Sasserson, Bu Shi, Dylan Williams

A light here required a shadow

A light here required a shadow

★★★☆☆

Catch the wrong end of the spectrum and forever remain obscured.

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

Pope.L

Hospital

Hospital

★★★☆☆

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

Tesfaye Urgessa, The Ethiopian Pavilion in Venice ★★★★★

Tesfaye Urgessa

Prejudice and Belonging

Prejudice and Belonging

★★★★★

Urgessa’s figures are contorted in love, death, or merely life.

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

France-Lise McGurn

Strawberry

Strawberry

★☆☆☆☆

McGurn has created the visual equivalent of elevator music.

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

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