Herman Chong

The Book of Equators

★★☆☆☆

On until 30 October 2024

Chong’s abstractions fancy themselves part of the literary canon. Rows of pastel-coloured strokes line up in grids, one next to and atop the other. Context clues – a slideshow of books clipped from paintings in the MET collection and a Chinese wallpaper poem – suggest that these acrylic marks stand in for book spines in a self-referential roman à clef. Read them all but they’ll still only half cover another set of patterns belonging to the canvases made from repurposed curtains.

Chong was probably reading some epic while painting his Equator pictures. In the gallery, however, they make up a tame cacophony that belongs in the self-help corner of a chain bookstore basement. It’s no book burning: like Idris Khan’s multi-exposure photographs of script, Chong wheels out the same idea not one but many times too many. This spoils the plot.


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

Hannah Tilson, Soft Cut at Cedric Bardawil ★★☆☆☆

Hannah Tilson

Soft Cut

★★☆☆☆

Tilson’s styled self-portraits are an affectation that will take many years of practice to pay off.

Bruno Zhu, License to Live at Chisenhale ★☆☆☆☆

Bruno Zhu

License to Live

★☆☆☆☆

Faced with so little, one longs for an even emptier room.

Esteban Jefferson, May 25th, 2020 at Goldsmiths CCA ★★★☆☆

Esteban Jefferson

May 25th, 2020

★★★☆☆

This exhibition is a warning to would-be propagandists: trust art at your peril.

Tarek Lakhrissi, Spit at Nicoletti ★★★☆☆

Tarek Lakhrissi

Spit

★★★☆☆

Writing poetry is hard enough.

Alvaro Barrington, Grandma’s Land at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Alvaro Barrington

Grandma’s Land

★★★☆☆

The party slumps into a half-voiced political complaint and never recovers. This is what happens when instead of living culture, we ‘celebrate’ it.

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.

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