Michael Simpson

★★★★☆

On until 17 February 2024

By pursuing ideologically unassuming programming, Modern Art has had quite a run of excellent shows this past year. It would be unfair, however, to question the method on Simpson’s canvasses because his habit of rendering life’s dimensional interstices – doors, ladders, and chimneys – as perspectival projections developed decades before he joined Stuart Shave’s stable.

The images, some nearly as expansive as the gallery’s walls, set out simple scenes. Fragments of architecture – like a quaint library console that could have come from Arne Jacobsen’s Brutalist design for Oxford’s St Catherine’s College – appear in technical detail in some. In others, they resonate with the graphic character of advertising or agit-prop and become scenes of sin, confession, and reparation. In this meditation of surface disguised as a study of objects, however, neither is a truer likeness of the events which Simpson deftly omits from his canvases. 


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

Christo, Early Works at Gagosian Open ★★★★☆

Christo

Early Works

Early Works

★★★★☆

To appreciate Christo’s early works against his wishes, one must forget his later stunts.

Tamara Henderson, Green in the Grooves at Camden Art Centre ★★★★☆

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome.

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, It Will End In Tears at Barbican Curve ★★☆☆☆

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

It Will End In Tears

It Will End In Tears

★★☆☆☆

With the right lighting, this story could be a mid-century colonial classic.

Urs Fischer, Scratch & Sniff at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Urs Fischer

Scratch & Sniff

Scratch & Sniff

★★★☆☆

It’s too early for a funeral, yet there’s no other reprieve in this commodity cult.

Dryland, the Greek pavilion in Venice ★★★★☆

Thanasis Deligiannis, Yannis Michalopoulos

Xirómero/Dryland

Xirómero/Dryland

★★★★☆

It’s Sunday in the village. And the main square is deserted.

France-Lise McGurn, Strawberry at Massimodecarlo ★☆☆☆☆

France-Lise McGurn

Strawberry

Strawberry

★☆☆☆☆

McGurn has created the visual equivalent of elevator music.

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