This show could have been solid five-star material. But I only got to see it through the gallery’s window because the staff didn’t let me come in a quarter of an hour before their official preview even though the door was wide open. That’s for the best because what I did see – paintings of foliage familiar in style from Ikea wallpapers that the press release claims are metaphors for “colonisation and migration of bodies across the Atlantic” – deserved even less attention.
Kevin Brisco Jr But I Hear There Are New Suns
Kevin Brisco Jr
But I Hear There Are New Suns
★★☆☆☆
On until 18 November 2023
notes and notices are short and curt exhibition reviews. Read more:
Xie Nanxing
Xie Nanxing
Hello, Portrait!
★★★★☆
Looking at Xie’s portraits is a little like wearing a virtual reality headset over only one eye.
Dickon Drury
Dickon Drury
The Preceding Cart & POV: You are Beans
★★★☆☆
Painting needs prophets, Drury plays a jester.
Max Boyla
Max Boyla
Crying like a fire in the sun
★★☆☆☆
Rothko’s abstractions are said to have induced tears in viewers overwhelmed by abstraction. Staring at the sun here, however, barely causes blindness.
Joseph Awuah-Darko
Joseph Awuah-Darko
How is your day going?
★★☆☆☆
This project relies on layers of gimmicks and, sadly, they show through Awuah-Darko’s thick palette knife impasto.
Eddie Ruscha
Eddie Ruscha
Seeing Frequencies
★☆☆☆☆
But either the curator or the artist should have known better.
Alvaro Barrington
Alvaro Barrington
Grandma’s Land
★★★☆☆
The party slumps into a half-voiced political complaint and never recovers. This is what happens when instead of living culture, we ‘celebrate’ it.
