Freudian Typo

Condensed Word, Displaced Flesh

★★☆☆☆

On until 31 August 2025

The problem of artists who confuse graphic design with art is that they also mistake sloganeering for critique. The Iran-born duo Freudian Typo do both as they mount an immersive yet dour infomercial on the history of credit.

They dub debt the key idea of Western Christendom: a 16th-century Hebrew manuscript is fodder for a goat trading video. “Render unto Revenue what is Revenue’s”, “Go in peace and keep your receipts”, preach posters set in UK PLC’s corporate typeface. Wordy charts dot the gallery that’s half vet’s surgery, half Stansted arrivals. 

Discharge from this debt prison comes with a reading list. Yet it is hard to believe that the artists themselves read Graeber, Lacan, or Freud other than in search of a catchphrase. It takes them hundreds of words in the show’s pamphlet to name-check The Merchant of Venice, for example, only to fall into the sixth-grader’s trap. 


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

Material Rites at Gathering ★★★☆☆

Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together.

Carla Åhlander, Aaron Amar Bhamra, Holding Places at Belmacz ★★★☆☆

Carla Åhlander, Aaron Amar Bhamr

Holding Places

★★★☆☆

The illusion is as good as complete.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Sprüth Magers ★★★★☆

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

★★★★☆

A police procedural turns into a drinking game of Foucauldian power analysis.

Michael Simpson at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Michael Simpson

★★★★☆

In this meditation of surface disguised as a study of objects, neither is a truer likeness of the events.

Julia Maiuri, Yesterday & The End at Workplace ★☆☆☆☆

Julia Maiuri

Yesterday & The End

★☆☆☆☆

One can only imagine that some unconscious loathing of postmen motivated this project.

Leonardo Drew, Ubiquity II at South London Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

There are many ways to misunderstand entropy.

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