Megan Rooney

Echoes & Hours

★★☆☆☆

Curated by Andrew Nairne, Amy Tobin
On until 6 October 2024

Can an exhibition be at once hubristic and timid? Rooney’s broad-stroke, bold colour abstract oils claim their space in the galleries without hesitation. A “family” of canvases on which the artist is said to have worked for a year makes a run for the prime spots under the skylights. They bear the crusty traces of a painterly battle: long lines applied at right angles as though in a feat of angry desperation. A mostly blue mural wraps another space from floor to ceiling, leaving the eye no respite. It merely magnifies the gestures from the smaller tableaux, as though the same artist now suffered from gigantism.

For all this bravado, Rooney’s compositions offer only a very surface experience of abstraction. Seen through a tight squint, her images pay lip service to Water Lilies or the Starry Night. But the artist knew that every abstract image ever made does the same just as well. Not even the gratuitous dance performance commissioned for the mural and shown in the exhibition as a video “activated” these paintings the way Rooney says in another film they deserve.


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

Trevor Yeung, Hong Kong in Venice ★★★☆☆

Trevor Yeung

Courtyard of Attachments

★★★☆☆

This fishbowl universe is easy sea comfort but ultimately no sushi.

Alia Farid, Elsewhere at Chisenhale ★★★☆☆

Alia Farid

Elsewhere

★★★☆☆

There is no answer in the work. Its cause and the object become enmeshed in a bland, exoticized mess. 

Joshua Leon, The Missing O and E at Chisenhale Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Joshua Leon

The Missing O and E

★☆☆☆☆

This embarrassing display indicts today’s second-fiddlers with narcissism and egomania.

Anna Glantz, Lichens at Approach ★★★☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Can't write template file

Lichens

★★★☆☆

The clues that Glantz leaves on her surfaces are also traps. There are either too many or not quite enough to follow or fall into. 

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz

Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

Mandy El-Sayegh, Interiors at Thaddeus Ropac ★★☆☆☆

Mandy El-Sayegh

Interiors

★★☆☆☆

For the abundance of material, there simply aren’t enough ideas in the exhibition to go around these Mayfair interiors.

×