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:

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?

Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain ★★☆☆☆

Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, Delaine Le Bas

Turner Prize 2024

★★☆☆☆

Even the artists approach this edition with ennui.

Choon Mi Kim, ACID—FREEEE at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆

Choon Mi Kim

ACID—FREEEE

★☆☆☆☆

Some forms of abstraction simply scream ‘my kid could have made that’.

New Contemporaries at South London Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

New Contemporaries

★☆☆☆☆

This edition spells ‘stasis’ more than most, and the selectors are to blame.

Haegue Yang, Leap Year at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Haegue Yang

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón at South Parade ★★☆☆☆

Carole Ebtinger, Esther Gatón

phosphorescence of my local lore

★★☆☆☆

Rot overpowered this subject and came for the object next. 

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