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:

Some May Work as Symbols at Raven Row ★★★★☆

Some May Work as Symbols: Art Made in Brazil, 1950s–70s

★★★★☆

Art history can catch modernity in splitting from the past and thus from itself.

Future Relics at Union Pacific ★★★★☆

Future Relics

★★★★☆

“Reskilling” has the same ring in art as “reindustrialisation” does in geopolitics.

Jennifer Bartlett, In the House at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Jennifer Bartlett

In the House

★★★★☆

“Sky”, “roof”, “31”, a mantra turns into paint.

Co Westerik, Centenary at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Co Westerik

Centenary

★★★★☆

Westerik catches his figures in deep contemplation in front of the mirror, in the gynaecologist’s chair, or even mid-orgy.

Karimah Ashadu: Tendered at Camden Art Centre ★★☆☆☆

Karimah Ashadu

Tendered

★★☆☆☆

Ashadu’s films are as banal as they are overbought with glib signifiers.

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett, >anticorpo< at Galerie Neu and Emalin ★★★★☆

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett

>anticorpo<

★★★★☆

Such ‘80s nostalgia for meaning before history’s end is a comfort blanket.

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