Fritsch, Genzken, Oldenburg, Shani, Sherman, Smithson, Thek

Material Rites

★★★☆☆

On until 9 March 2024

Material’s disastrous influence on meaning, questioned in this show deftly by Oldenburg, Sherman, and Genzken, should be art’s most pressing concern. The role of faith in the making of truth, likewise, is routinely overlooked. Here, Thek and Fritsch take a good stab at it.

The instincts are right, but too much makes sense to make sense together in this cramped Soho showroom. A scan of the gallery’s roster reveals that the project’s aim is to upvote a couple of amorphous, although figurative works by Tai Shani. Curatorial and commercial ambitions mix thus, and suffer the same fate we all do.


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

Miranda Forrester, Arrival at Tiwani Contemporary ★★★☆☆

Miranda Forrester

Arrival

★★★☆☆

Forrester’s project is timely when foundational concepts like ‘mother’ and their ‘as-though’ counterparts are readily confused.

Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Odoteres Ricardo de Ozias

★★★☆☆

These images are perfectly charming even to a viewer possessed of a cold anthropological eye. The troubling part is in realising just how far ‘outside’ the ideas are.

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.

Özgür Kar, Heavy Ground at Emalin ★★★☆☆

Özgür Kar

Heavy Ground

★★★☆☆

Kar’s insight a fly’s life – or, to have it his way, the whole universe – is fleeting.

Rheim Alkadhi, Templates for Liberation at ICA ★★☆☆☆

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

When truth and artifice are so bluntly opposed, what use is aesthetics?

Saccharine Symbols at Rose Easton ★★★☆☆

Marisa Krangwiwat Holmes, Shamiran Istifan, Tasneem Sarkez

Saccharine Symbols

★★★☆☆

Meaning parts with the image in this exhibition, never to return. Post-structuralism triumphs.

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