Max Boyla

Crying like a fire in the sun

★★☆☆☆

On until 6 April 2024

Boyla’s sky-sizes canvases rendered in bleached ink mauves, pinks, and rust are the product of meditation that turned into catatonia. These images are reminiscent of tie-dye t-shirts more than of the sun’s coronal explosions or even the blotchy floaters one occasionally sees in their field of vision. A slightly quirky hang which has the paintings hover oddly above the floor and the gallery’s lighting grid replaced by singular sources force-aestheticise this non-experience. 

Rothko’s abstractions are said to have induced tears in viewers overwhelmed by abstraction. Staring at the sun here, however, barely causes blindness.


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

Means of Reproduction at Emalin ★★☆☆☆

Means of Reproduction

★★☆☆☆

Is consumption is the greatest form of anticapitalism?

The Music is Black at V&A East ★★☆☆☆

The Music is Black: A British Story

★★☆☆☆

Can there be a “black British music” without Britain or blackness?

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Entre El Día Y La Noche at Pace ★☆☆☆☆

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello

Entre El Día Y La Noche

★☆☆☆☆

If only they were smaller, Piñera Ballo’s paintings would be a great hit in the shopping centre gallery your ex-army uncle just opened in Surrey. He’s gambling with the family’s savings, you condescend, but so is Pace with their show.…

Sylvie Fleury, S.F. at Sprüth Magers ★★★☆☆

Sylvie Fleury

S.F.

★★★☆☆

In Fleury’s car workshop cum womenswear boutique, everything is ready-made and ready-to-wear. But you can’t touch any of it and you certainly can’t afford it.

Bitch Magic at Alma Pearl ★★★☆☆

Renate Bertlmann, Cullinan Richards, Ayla Dmyterko, Permindar Kaur, Rebecca Parkin, Tai Shani, Penny Slinger, Georgina Starr, Unyimeabasi Udoh

Bitch Magic

★★★☆☆

There will be no women when this spell breaks. And no need for magic, either.

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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