Haegue Yang

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

On until 5 January 2025

The only good way to encounter a Yang piece is on the last day of an art fair, where the dealer won’t mind your kid jangling the bells on her giant mobile sculptures. In the gallery, only the staff may touch the same laundry racks and light bulbs lest they find life of their own. These objects lack verve here, like in the Ikea catalogue where they belong.

The institution mindlessly reads life, culture, and even high politics into Yang’s window blind hangings, ignoring her testimony of this project’s sterility. It sadly makes far less of her early varnish and waste paintings which are the show’s only lively components. Next to them, Yang’s ‘Korean craft’ section comes off as a con and not a life’s question. The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.


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

Aziza Kadyri, the Uzbekistan pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Aziza Kadyri

Don't Miss the Cue

★★★★☆

This dissonance might be intentional. If it isn’t, so much for the better.

Alex Katz, Spring at Timothy Taylor ★★☆☆☆

Alex Katz

Spring

★★☆☆☆

The emperor’s clothes have moth holes.

Quentin James McCaffrey at Alison Jacques ★★☆☆☆

Quentin James McCaffrey

★★☆☆☆

McCaffrey fails to distinguish between the frame and what’s inside it.

Chronoplasticity at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

This may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

Isaac Julien: All That Changes You. Metamorphosis at Victoria Miro ★★☆☆☆

Isaac Julien

All That Changes You. Metamorphosis

★★☆☆☆

An idle fancy is detached from here and now, which already shows signs of ageing.

Diego Marcon, Dolle at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Diego Marcon

Dolle

★★★☆☆

Idle work became indistinguishable from leisure, vegetative time-passing from family life.

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