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:

Eddie Ruscha, Seeing Frequencies at Cedric Bardawil ★☆☆☆☆

Eddie Ruscha

Seeing Frequencies

Seeing Frequencies

★☆☆☆☆

But either the curator or the artist should have known better.

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

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

Diego Marcon

Dolle

Dolle

★★★☆☆

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

Robert Rauschenberg, ROCI at Thaddeus Ropac ★★★☆☆

Robert Rauschenberg

ROCI

ROCI

★★★☆☆

This project outs Rauschenberg as a propagandist if not an outright Fed.

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!

RE/SISTERS at Barbican ★★☆☆☆

RE/SISTERS

RE/SISTERS

★★☆☆☆

Too many deadpan landscape photographs turn intrigue into fatigue and into paralysis.

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