Klara Lidén

Square Moon

★★☆☆☆

On until 15 February 2025

The tragedy of a one-hit-wonder visual artist is that good painting or sculpture is harder to hum than a once-catchy tune. Lidén could be typecast by her 2010 billboard poster assemblies. Indeed, her practice has stayed close conceptually to their concerns since. This new show tries to repeat those works’ success quite literally, barely bothering to swap one backing track for another. Doing so, it misses that the world and Lidén have evolved in over a decade.

The billboard meditations on the city and the image are back, and this time they’re electric. But that’s not because they take from Rothko or Albers as they’d have you believe: each literally needs a plug socket. Museum benches propped up on stacks of card waste suggest that one should look at them with intent, without explaining why. A pair of mostly black videos cryptically set on a beach are the one source of true intrigue.

But this isn’t Times Square in a blackout. Lidén made so, so very many copies of these works that they overwhelmed her better judgment. Even the gallery deemed some redundant and it dismantled part of the exhibition halfway through to accommodate another artist’s show.


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

Paulina Olowska at Pace ★★★★☆

Paulina Olowska

Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas

★★★★☆

It should be within the resources of Pace and Olowska’s experience to advance her legend beyond the discretely marketable.

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.

transfeminisms Chapter IV at Mimosa House ★☆☆☆☆

transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

★☆☆☆☆

Lack of care for the artefact is a strange USP for a gallery.

Carla Åhlander, Aaron Amar Bhamra, Holding Places at Belmacz ★★★☆☆

Carla Åhlander, Aaron Amar Bhamr

Holding Places

★★★☆☆

The illusion is as good as complete.

Geumhyung Jeong, Under Construction at ICA ★☆☆☆☆

Geumhyung Jeong

Under Construction

★☆☆☆☆

This tech-optimism might have entertained gallery-goers twenty years ago.

Eva Rothschild at Modern Art ★★☆☆☆

Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

These sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason.

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