Justin Chance

Motherhood

★★☆☆☆

On until 26 October 2024

Quilt me a story. Chance’s wool fibre hangings stuffed between silk sheets set off accidental abstractions. One hides the outlines of a Leonardo cartoon. Another’s single blemish becomes a Caribbean island. Coming to the third which is densely marked as if it were a budget Basquiat, the mind is primed to play along with the artist’s unwitting trick. 

An intricate woven butterfly atlas completes the set. If only Chance stopped there. He also wrote two versions of his show’s press release but still somehow made no sense of his story. His barely comprehensible copy stitches a juvenile historical grievance into the chaos of a butterfly’s flutter. These ideas rob the works of authenticity. Their grammar, worse than is customary of the genre, turns the show into a joke. 


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

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.

Alex Katz, Spring at Timothy Taylor ★★☆☆☆

Alex Katz

Spring

★★☆☆☆

The emperor’s clothes have moth holes.

Dominique Fung, (Up)Rooted, at Massimo de Carlo ★★☆☆☆

Dominique Fung

(Up)Rooted

★★☆☆☆

All this tries to be macabre and surreal like in Bosch or Miyazaki but is instead laughably twee.

Noah Davis at The Barbican ★★★☆☆

Noah Davis

★★★☆☆

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

Pope.L, Hospital at South London Gallery ★★★☆☆

Pope.L

Hospital

★★★☆☆

This project lands in the joke section of Animal Farm and not as a prophecy of the Jan 6th insurrection.

A Comparative Dialogue Act, Luxemburg pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Andrea Mancini, Every Island

A Comparative Dialogue Act

★★☆☆☆

Stage fright is real. Cowardice is another thing altogether.

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