Joseph Awuah-Darko

How is your day going?

★★☆☆☆

On until 19 October 2024

A small board smeared with a single stripe of dirty blue oil paint marks the beginning of Awuah-Darko’s diaristic series of geometric abstractions. The painter must have been experiencing despair on June 3, P.M. to start his show with such a singularly drab mark. His mood picked up a week later, however. June 17, P.M.’s tableau is one shade short of a rainbow, while July 4, P.M. is an outright firework display.

This project relies on layers of gimmicks and, sadly, they show through Awuah-Darko’s thick palette knife impasto. Despite the gallery’s promise, there is no trace of the artist’s moods in these images, nor his thoughts on the world around him. Instead, the oils celebrate the paint-by-numbers Excel spreadsheet that brought them into existence. Given that these works make a claim on Josef Albers’ coloured fields with which they share form and colour, this artifice is barely forgivable.

All art relies on a degree of narcissism. Even a classical landscape is an argument for one artist’s vision over another’s. Awuah-Darko, however, skips the painter’s travail altogether and demands the viewer’s attention for some already mediated ‘me’. 


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

Patricia Ferguson, Each Little Scar at FILET ★★★★☆

Patricia Ferguson

Each Little Scar

★★★★☆

No medium is better suited to anxiety and dread.

Material Rites at Gathering ★★★☆☆

Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together.

Joanne Burke, Oes with works like Esses at Soft Opening ★★★★☆

Joanne Burke

Oes with works like Esses

★★★★☆

Hot metal is that, like water, it spills away from the mould.

Fake Barn Country at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Fake Barn Country

★☆☆☆☆

This show of nearly thirty artists makes a pitch at many extremes, failing to reach any.

Jan Gatewood, Group Relations at Rose Easton ★☆☆☆☆

Jan Gatewood

Group Relations

★☆☆☆☆

Such thin metaphors could only have come from LA.

Dickon Drury at Seventeen ★★★☆☆

Dickon Drury

The Preceding Cart & POV: You are Beans

★★★☆☆

Painting needs prophets, Drury plays a jester.

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