Meeson Jessica Pae

Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

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:

Mohammed Z. Rahman, A Flame is a Petal at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Mohammed Z. Rahman

A Flame is a Petal

★★★☆☆

Rahman’s zine hand makes this make-believe explicit but not plausible.

Flare-Up at Goldsmiths CCA ★☆☆☆☆

Flare-Up

★☆☆☆☆

The social model of disability meets the Romantic notion that consumption makes the artist a truth-seer.

Robert Ryman, Line at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Robert Ryman

Line

★★★☆☆

The artist’s signature becomes a distress call.

Celia Hempton, Transplant at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Celia Hempton

Transplant

★★★☆☆

Sense finally returns only outside the gallery.

Marina Abramović, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas ★☆☆☆☆

Marina Abramović

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

★☆☆☆☆

Abramović wants to destroy all performance and all women until she holds the monopoly over stage death.

The Ear is the Eye of the Soul, Holy See pavilion in Venice ★★★☆☆

Alexander Kluge et al.

The Ear is the Eye of the Soul

★★★☆☆

Nuns singing, musicological trivia, and Comic Sans.

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