Maso Nakahara

Floating Through Time

★★★★☆

On until 4 October 2025

Houldsworth’s programme doesn’t get the recognition it may deserve, perhaps because so much of it looks ‘outsider’ as a matter of branding. Nakahara’s mix of studied naïveté and accidental surrealism is a case in point. Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss his protagonists about before the painter makes for them a life raft of cherry blossom. The canvases, small enough to protest innocence, are disarming enough. Their sculptural companions, like the pair of child lovers in a birdcage, turn sickly ‘cute’ like a Labubu. They speak over the wind’s rush with childlike ennui of an artist making work solely for himself.


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

Vinca Petersen, Me, Us and Dogs at Edel Assanti ★★★☆☆

Vinca Petersen

Me, Us and Dogs

★★★☆☆

Close up, Petersen’s innocents today conjure ideas of redneck resistance. At scale, of state-marketed utopia. The middle ground is envy.

Noah Davis at The Barbican ★★★☆☆

Noah Davis

★★★☆☆

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

SACCADES, Leo Arnold with Jo Baer at Brunette Coleman ★★★★☆

Leo Arnold with Jo Baer

SACCADES

★★★★☆

One dare not ask for more.

Place Revisited at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Richard Aldrich, Prunella Clough, Masanori Tomita, Anh Trần, Terry Winters

Place Revisited

★★★★☆

One suspects the gallery of insider trading.

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

Will Gabaldón

Flicker

★★★☆☆

Gabaldón reinvents the pastoral for the Instagram generation.

Joshua Leon, The Missing O and E at Chisenhale Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Joshua Leon

The Missing O and E

★☆☆☆☆

This embarrassing display indicts today’s second-fiddlers with narcissism and egomania.

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