Nanténé Traoré

She says it's the high energy

★★☆☆☆

On until 17 February 2024

A social media advert targeted at my middle-aged eyes suggested that old retinas lose their ability to register colour. Traoré’s photographs render this sales pitch obsolete. Even when printed in monochrome, these images scream uncontrollably. They are saturated with colour and noxious self-obsession, the kind of aspirational self-harm made glamourous by Goldin and cos-played by Tillmans. Bodies clash with lights in front of Traoré’s Narcissus camera. They do so not for art but for that Instagram algorithm whose promise I must miss out on.

It needn’t have been so. Traoré wants these images to speak with Apollinaire and Rilke, or at least Björk and Pink Floyd. But not one of these correspondents sought life entirely within his or her body. Traoré, a self-professed obsessive storyteller might one day look past such carnal fixation.


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

Roland Knowlden: Negations at House Work Presents ★★★☆☆

Roland Knowlden

Negations

★★★☆☆

An exhausted porcupine and an architectural war plan.

Alexandre Canonico, Still at Ab Anbar ★★★☆☆

Alexandre Canonico

Still

★★★☆☆

Conanico’s slight structures look like they could take flight at any moment.

Christopher Wool at Gagosian ★★★☆☆

Christopher Wool

★★★☆☆

No room for the eye, no way to follow the line.

Jordan Derrien, Painted on a Wall of the Inn at Marlotte at Des Bains ★★☆☆☆

Jordan Derrien

Painted on a Wall of the Inn at Marlotte

★★☆☆☆

Derrien has his audience discussing the nature of paint drying out loud.

Judith Dean at South Parade ★★★★☆

Judith Dean

New Builds / Bilds 2: did you mean peace?

★★★★☆

Holbein’s skulls impresses no one anymore.

Future Relics at Union Pacific ★★★★☆

Future Relics

★★★★☆

“Reskilling” has the same ring in art as “reindustrialisation” does in geopolitics.

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