James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher

★★★☆☆

On until 19 April 2025

Not taking the Becher’s name in vain was once the sole Düsseldorf school commandment. Welling trained elsewhere and, besides, his claim on typology is also a decades-long story. Yet this two-venue paring of the three photographers’ deadpan architectural meditations is a dead giveaway of Welling as a mere imitator.

Perhaps. The Bechers recorded industrial phenomena with such restraint that their lens critique was evident in even a single snapshot. Welling’s veneration of brutalist concrete – his lens turns to Washington’s infamous HUD building now outlawed under Trump’s classical architecture edict – borders on a fetish by contrast. But if one no longer needs to look at Bernd and Hilla’s grain silos, Welling’s quasi-opportunistic fixation leads to fresher discoveries.


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

Justin Chance, Motherhood at Ginny on Frederick ★★☆☆☆

Justin Chance

Motherhood

Motherhood

★★☆☆☆

If only he stopped there.

Milly Thompson, My Body Temperature is Feeling Good at Goldsmiths CCA ★★☆☆☆

Milly Thompson

My Body Temperature is Feeling Good

My Body Temperature is Feeling Good

★★☆☆☆

Oh, what is it to be a woman in a world of nothing but!

William S. Burroughs at October Gallery

William S. Burroughs

★★☆☆☆

Burroughs should be sexy, right?

Șerban Savu, The Romanian Pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Șerban Savu

What Work Is

What Work Is

★★★★☆

This Elysium is part panel house block, half Roman ruin

Anna Barriball at Frith Street Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Anna Barriball

New Drawings

New Drawings

★★☆☆☆

The eyes may be the windows of the soul. To make an aphorism of the reverse needs more than shadow-play.

Justin Fitzpatrick, Ballotta at Seventeen ★★★★★

Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

Ballotta

★★★★★

The reward for taking part in this experiment of life is ascension to the holy orders. 

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