Jacob Dahlgren

When Anxieties Become Form

★★☆☆☆

On until 27 September 2024

“Choose one idea and stick with it no matter what” was decent advice for an artist until a couple of decades ago. Dahlgren took this to heart and spent his career rearranging stripes of colour with a dedication that would put Daniel Buren to shame. He has produced stripy prints, sculptures, videos, and photographs. He has even staged a series of colour protests filled with placards designed to his colour scheme. He probably makes his own t-shirts which, of course, are always striped.

I met Dahlgren in his studio over a decade ago and even then wondered how and if his practice might develop. It seems that it hasn’t. But should it? In this anxiously posed show, the works are older than the artist’s last good idea, and nothing strives for novelty not already synonymous with modernity. If only Dahlgren’s proposition was any more daring, disordered, or simply counterintuitive, the gallery might be spared waiting for his stripe to enter the canon.


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

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting at National Portrait Gallery ★★★☆☆

Jenny Saville

The Anatomy of Painting

★★★☆☆

There is no trace of the visceral in Saville’s gentle pencil studies, for example.

Slawn at Saatchi Yates ★★☆☆☆

Slawn

★★☆☆☆

Do you like KAWS but find him too expensive?

Nicola Turner, Edward Bekkerman at Shtager&Shch ★★☆☆☆

Nicola Turner, Edward Bekkerman

The Song of Psyche: Corners of a Soul's Otherworlds

★★☆☆☆

Who opens a space in Fitzrovia only to fill it with such drivel?

Sin Wei Kin, Portraits at Soft Opening ★★☆☆☆

Sin Wei Kin

Portraits

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition combines the most vulgar of all art school tropes: juvenile narcissism, NFT kitsch, and mindless referentialism.

Helen Johnson, Opening at Pilar Corrias ★☆☆☆☆

Helen Johnson

Opening

★☆☆☆☆

This is the work of a mind that, having needlessly spent years in therapy, became hooked on ennui or of an artist who wasted time misreading Lacan.

Botond Keresztesi, NPC (No-one Paints Chrysopoeia) at Seventeen ★★★☆☆

Botond Keresztesi

NPC (No-one Paints Chrysopoeia)

★★★☆☆

There is no “too much” in this fantasy meme game.

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