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:

Chronoplasticity at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Chronoplasticity

★☆☆☆☆

This may have been a good joke but it’s just too exhausting to look at.

David Muenzer, Teen at Final Hot Desert ★★★☆☆

David Muenzer

Teen

★★★☆☆

Muenzer’s messy show bedroom actually is someone’s messy bedroom most nights of the week.

Sula Bermúdez-Silverman, Bad Luck Rock at Josh Lilley ★★☆☆☆

Sula Bermúdez-Silverman

Bad Luck Rock

★★☆☆☆

This is a poor man’s version of history or a philistine collector’s absolution.

Michaël Borremans, The Monkey at David Zwirner ★★★★★

Michaël Borremans

The Monkey

★★★★★

Borremans toys with his subjects, his audience, and with art history.

Diego Marcon, Dolle at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Diego Marcon

Dolle

★★★☆☆

Idle work became indistinguishable from leisure, vegetative time-passing from family life.

Noah Davis at The Barbican ★★★☆☆

Noah Davis

★★★☆☆

Davis’ canvases give an account of time more sensitively than the Victorian portrait photograph

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