Judith Dean

New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?

★★★★☆

On until 14 June 2025

There is a form of aesthetic enjoyment described by Gombrich that arises when the mind solves a puzzle set by an artist for the eye. Dean’s geometric trompes skew parallaxes and perspectives, forcing the process of sensing into two. Rhomboid and polygonal canvases play host to projections and mappings, each with a Euclidian logic, in which further frames, figures, and faces compete for plane primacy.

This once baffling picture-in-picture vision of ‘90s TV sets is now second nature to the third eye which evolved at the end of the phone-clutching hand. Holbein’s skull impresses no one anymore. But Dean takes her spatial trickery seriously, loading it with temporal signatures that throw the installation to the corner of the arcade’s mirror room.


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

Mohammad Ghazali, Trilogy: Then… at Ab-Anbar ★★★★☆

Mohammad Ghazali

Trilogy: Then…

★★★★☆

Repetition and framing are photography’s greatest tricks.

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

Jan Gatewood

Group Relations

★☆☆☆☆

Such thin metaphors could only have come from LA.

Ron Nagle, Conniption at Modern Art ★★★★★

Ron Nagle

Conniption

★★★★★

Less is more, as the saying goes. Nagle’s porcelain and resin maquettes are the bare minimum.

Karrabing Film Collective, Night Fishing with Ancestors at Goldsmiths CCA ★☆☆☆☆

Karrabing Film Collective

Night Fishing with Ancestors

★☆☆☆☆

Little separates this display from a human zoo complete with curators who occasionally kettle-prod the once noble savage into a spectacular rage.

Justin Fitzpatrick, Ballotta at Seventeen ★★★★★

Justin Fitzpatrick

Ballotta

★★★★★

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

Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias

★★★☆☆

These images are perfectly charming even to a viewer possessed of a cold anthropological eye. The troubling part is in realising just how far ‘outside’ the ideas are.

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