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:

Anna Glantz, Lichens at Approach ★★★☆☆

Anna Glantz

Lichens

★★★☆☆

The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 

Michael Andrew Page, Claustrum at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Sprüth Magers ★★★★☆

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

★★★★☆

A police procedural turns into a drinking game of Foucauldian power analysis.

Harmony Korine, Aggressive Dr1fter Part II at Hauser & Wirth ★★☆☆☆

Harmony Korine

Aggressive Dr1fter Part II

★★☆☆☆

The garish colours which may have carried the story in cinema here are unfitting of their new medium.

Tommy Camerno, Delirious at Filet ★★☆☆☆

Tommy Camerno

Delirious

★★☆☆☆

What’s left of the show are stage props that feed adolescent imaginations with false memories of the long-finished party.

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji at Sweetwater and Studio M ★★★★★

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

Aesthetic cognition or crossword puzzles only rarely bring such perverse pleasure.

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