Justin Caguiat

Dreampop

★★★★☆

On until 4 November 2023

This is the sort of exhibition that makes a critic question the quality of their judgment. In principle, Caguiat’s large-scale abstract canvases shouldn’t feel this alluring. The paintings are filled with splodges of colour that resemble Van Gogh’s starry sky as if seen through a kaleidoscope. The surfaces are at times too busy and some look like children’s book illustrations in which all shapes and colours have swapped place. 

But for this precisely they are arresting. At first, they become detective stories: squint to see Bosch’s Last Judgment in one and follow another to Toulouse Lautrec’s Montmartre. The critic brain rebels at this trick, but it only draws the eye closer until it understands that the paint itself is an abstraction. It takes a moment for the senses to recover from this illusion and when they are restored, the shapes and colours emerge with an entirely new logic of their own.


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

Megan Rooney, Echoes & Hours at Kettle’s Yard ★★☆☆☆

Megan Rooney

Echoes & Hours

★★☆☆☆

For all this bravado, Rooney’s compositions offer only a very surface experience of abstraction.

Open Group, The Polish pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Open Group

Repeat After Me II

★★★☆☆

The applause was rapturous. A sense of tragedy, however, was altogether missing.

Will Gabaldón, Flicker at Union Pacific ★★★☆☆

Will Gabaldón

Flicker

★★★☆☆

Gabaldón reinvents the pastoral for the Instagram generation.

Condo: The Ambassadors at Wien at Ginny on Frederick ★☆☆☆☆

Sophie Giraux, Albert Dietrich

Condo: The Ambassadors

★☆☆☆☆

Everything about this show feels lazy.

Means of Reproduction at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Means of Reproduction

★★☆☆☆

Is consumption is the greatest form of anticapitalism?

What Is It Like? at Arebyte ★★☆☆☆

Anna Bunting-Branch, Choy Ka Fai, Damara Inglês, Katarzyna Krakowiak, Lawrence Lek, Kira Xonorika

What Is It Like?

★★☆☆☆

What does it feel like for an intelligence to be artificial?

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