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:

Gray Wielebinski, The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low at ICA ★☆☆☆☆

Gray Wielebinski

The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low

★☆☆☆☆

I knew that it was possible to understand art and life less after seeing an exhibition. I didn’t, however, imagine that experiencing Wielebinski’s work twice would only compound such damage.

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

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Low Anchored Cloud

★★☆☆☆

Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

Riar Rizaldi, Mirage at Gasworks ★★★☆☆

Riar Rizaldi

Mirage

★★★☆☆

When an artist thinks he’s understood quantum mechanics, he doesn’t. How will he know if he knows god?

Armando D. Cosmos, Nothing New Under the Sun at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Armando D. Cosmos

Nothing New Under the Sun

★★★☆☆

Cosmos wants to redefine STEM as the alliance of science, theosophy, engineering, and myth.

Auudi Dorsey at PM/AM ★★★★☆

Auudi Dorsey

★★★★☆

Dorsey records the human experience with the true universalism of paint.

Justin Fitzpatrick, Ballotta at Seventeen ★★★★★

Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

★★★★★

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

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