Jasper Marsalis

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★★★★☆

On until 16 November 2024

The game begins even outside the gallery, where a dirtied drawing casts a rabbit shadow. Mounting the stairs, the visitor encounters a TV screen showing a blurry eye. Next to it leans a sculpture made from a bowling ball and pool cue. These traces of play continue. A pair of trousers hangs abandoned as though a comic ran for it halfway through his stand-up routine. A mirror mosaic panel bear the signs of a party worthy of supermarket cake but no more.

This scene is austere, yet unashamedly playful. Marsalis plays tricks, but he gives them up willingly, too. One of his large oils starts embarrassed in the gamer’s POV only to become a luscious abstract landscape. Bowling balls turn into tripping hazards, and a too-easy-to-miss camera beams the art-lovers’ contorted faces to an advertising billboard.

Working with both all and with very little, Marsalis injects his props with life. His circus is in town, its acts are the infrastructure of contentment. A less practised surgeon would have killed the proverbial frog. 


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

Dryland, the Greek pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos

Xirómero/Dryland

★★★★☆

It’s Sunday in the village. And the main square is deserted.

James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher at Maureen Paley ★★★☆☆

James Welling and Bernd & Hilla Becher

★★★☆☆

Welling’s veneration of brutalist concrete borders on fetish.

Celia Hempton, Transplant at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Celia Hempton

Transplant

★★★☆☆

Sense finally returns only outside the gallery.

Florian Meisenberg, What does the smoke know of the fire? at Kate MacGarry, ★★★★☆

Florian Meisenberg

What does the smoke know of the fire?

★★★★☆

Meisenberg’s paintings are either the product of a conspiracy or documents of a conspiracy theory.

Cui Jie, Thermal Currents at Pilar Corrias ★☆☆☆☆

Cui Jie

Thermal Landscapes

★☆☆☆☆

The exhibition feels like a lecture on climate change sponsored by the designers of The Line, Saudi Arabia’s dystopian plan for a 110-mile linear city in the desert.

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.

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