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:

Medusa at Union Gallery ★★★☆☆

Ada Bond, Rebecca Davy, Karen Densha, Sam Owen Hull, Hilary Jack, Rachel Goodyear, Evita Ziemele, et al.

Medusa

★★★☆☆

Interpreting a tale this grotesque, ugly, and venomous will take thousands of years

John Tweddle, Michael Landy: Market Day at The Mayor Gallery ★★★☆☆

John Tweddle, Michael Landy

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★★★☆☆

Nothing here disrupts the market, freeing the eye from the wallet.

Women in Revolt! at Tate ★★★☆☆

Women in Revolt!

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There’s a room for female labour, a corner for childbirth, one for black women, and a section for lesbians. This is as close to nuance as Tate gets today.

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

Lydia Gifford

Low Anchored Cloud

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Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

Andreas Angelidakis: Escape Room at the Greek pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Andreas Angelidakis

Escape Room

★★☆☆☆

Make Plato’s Cave Great Again

Elisa Giardina Papa: She Flickered In and Out of History at ICA

Elisa Giardina Papa

She Flickered In and Out of History

★★☆☆☆

Giardina Papa renders transhumanist dreams sharply. Their promise, alas, is imaginable only in uninhabitable abstract.

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