pierre d'alancaisez

Meeson Jessica Pae
Secretions & Formations

Carl Kostyál, London

★★★★☆

On until 13 January 2024

If the hospital played host to an artist-in-residence programme, Pae’s paintings would be of great use in the staff training room and the consultant’s office. But her arrangements of arteries, glands, and other bodily organs that fill half a dozen intensely crimson canvases have no respect for anatomy. Bloodstreams become spaceports, the large intestine the site of a battle. 

Oil paint can cause cancer. A surgery of galactic scale sliced through these forms, leaving their tendrils hanging in mucous-filled cavities. Despite this, a boundless life force orients these pictures. What they suffer in eek-factor, they overcome with sheer metabolic desire. 

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

Iris Touliatou, Outfits at PEER ★★★☆☆

Iris Touliatou

Outfits

★★★☆☆

These gestures remind the gallery that it is a social space. Unfortunately, they also inadvertently point to its sorry end.

Josèfa Ntjam’s, swell of spæc(i)es, Venice ★★☆☆☆

Josèfa Ntjam

swell of spæc(i)es

★★☆☆☆

Ntjam’s Biennale presentation has all the hallmarks of world-building ambition. For one, it boasts two separate locations, one dedicated solely to the work’s public programme. The main feature is housed in a giant purpose-made structure which occupies a third of…

Amanda Wall, Femcel at Almine Rech ★★★☆☆

Amanda Wall

Femcel

★★★☆☆

There’s no dignity in paint when the arc of art history tends to “show hole”.

Josiane M.H. Pozi, Through My Fault at Carlos/Ishikawa ★★★☆☆

Josiane M.H. Pozi

Through My Fault

★★★☆☆

There’s a group, but they’re as indistinct as the faces of Jesus that regularly appear to people on slices of toast.

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.

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold at Tabula Rasa ★★★★☆

Elli Antoniou, Ali Glover, Richard Dean Hughes

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

★★★★☆

These works could bear witness to the birth of a star or the heat death of the universe. The curators don’t know which.

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