Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

On until 17 February 2024

When e-flux adds #neurodivergent to the tags they use to big-data all art, Page’s paintings are sure to make the top of the set. His linen oils, as repetitious as they are meticulously executed, point to a preoccupation that few minds sustain. In granular but confusing detail, each explodes a grand structure. 

The arches, columns, and domes – half implied, half drawn in near one-to-one scale – could be the features of a cathedral. CAD, image transfers, and meditation all leave marks on these diagrams. The show’s titles then turn these monuments and their much poorer, windswept cousins into defenders of life’s frailty. Finally, they become the structures of life itself.

All this is pleasing to look at for an #actuallyautistic mind until it remembers that Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason. To share in this discovery is the purpose of art.


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

Marc-Aurèle Debut: ON REPEAT at Glasshouse ★★★☆☆

Marc-Aurèle Debut

ON REPEAT

★★★☆☆

The orgy is long over.

Maso Nakahara: Floating Through Time at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Maso Nakahara

Floating Through Time

★★★★☆

Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss Nakahara’s protagonists about.

Peter Fischli and David Weiss at Sprüth Magers ★★★★☆

Peter Fischli and David Weiss

★★★★☆

A police procedural turns into a drinking game of Foucauldian power analysis.

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?

Machine Painting at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Machine Painting

★★★★☆

Ask DALL-E to paint an abstraction and it’ll confidently produce a museum-worthy clone

Eva Rothschild at Modern Art ★★☆☆☆

Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

These sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason.

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