Jenkin van Zyl

Dance of the Sleepwalkers

★★★☆☆

On until 9 March 2024

On the gallery’s black walls, van Zyl’s metallic drawings look like graffiti in one of those property guardianship projects that would have been a crack den a decade or two ago. Today, it breaks the budget of a trust fund hipster artist. Fantastical figures – half rats, half human gimps – lock in an erotic death dance in one image. The head of this game’s loser becomes a trophy in another. But the polished steel and brushed aluminium surfaces of these tableaux, reminders of this environment’s once functional intent and the work’s commercial aspirations, cry out for real vermin and vandalism. 

The manufacture of faux subcultural memorabilia is Edel Assanti’s ongoing side hustle. Here, each of van Zyl’s posters comes with a wall sculpture made from the ubiquitous intercom panels that adorn the doorways of shared occupation buildings. Ring 1 for “Grief”, and it’s flat 7 for “Garbage”. Their poor state – finally! – betrays the base humour of this one-star hotel’s residents, but also the whole show’s false-grit indecision.


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

Eva Rothschild at Modern Art ★★☆☆☆

Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

These sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason.

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

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May 25th, 2020

★★★☆☆

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

Genuine Fake Premium Economy at ICA ★★★☆☆

Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison, Jasmine Gregory

Genuine Fake Premium Economy

★★★☆☆

What would it take for an artist to take control of the means of aesthetic production?

Iris Touliatou, Outfits at PEER ★★★☆☆

Iris Touliatou

Outfits

★★★☆☆

These gestures remind the gallery that it is a social space. Unfortunately, they also inadvertently point to its sorry end.

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett, >anticorpo< at Galerie Neu and Emalin ★★★★☆

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett

>anticorpo<

★★★★☆

Such ‘80s nostalgia for meaning before history’s end is a comfort blanket.

Condo: Zero at Brunette Coleman ★★★★☆

Paride Maria Calcia, Hubert Duprat, Irene Fenara

Condo

★★★★☆

The word ‘organic’ once encompassed forms of matter that were anything but.

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