Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_652561e7b35ac) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65c00d11d337f) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65c0067274f18) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_652561e69dc80) template: Templates folder is not writable

Eisenman’s oeuvre, presented here chronologically, invites sympathy to begin with. The painter was a war artist to the subcultural and sexual shenanigans of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1990s. Imagine a wall’s worth of orgiastic sketches (Viz magazine but in oil paint) and you’ll wish you’d dropped out of the same art school. A decade later, when Eisenman’s midlife crisis coincided with America’s brutal political reawakening, her interest turned to the lone figure. As she mourned the loss of youth and relationships, her cartoonish affectations gave way to Holbein, Breughel, and Bacon.

But come Tea Party time, the tables turned and Eisenman has since used her canvases to warn, not plead. There’s a Bosch hellscape dedicated to Trump, a scene with a red-hatted MAGA chud, and a whole “basket of deplorables” polishing their guns in a prepper cell. The exhibition’s finale is a reproduction (!) of a group portrait of Eisenman’s art world friends lounging in a park to protest police violence that would fascinate an anthropologist.

These works lack the universalism of Eisenman’s earlier practice. Instead of confidence, they breed paranoia. And it, in turn, casts doubt on the earlier work’s daring.


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

A Comparative Dialogue Act, Luxemburg pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_652561e7b35ac) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

Stage fright is real. Cowardice is another thing altogether.

Yoko Ono at Tate ★★★☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_652561e7b35ac) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

This show will sell tickets. But it won’t change the weather.

Teewon Ahn and Ibrahim Meïté Sikely at Gianni Manhattan and P21 at Project Native Informant ★★★☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

These works are as garish as they are fun to look at.

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

Fake Barn Country at Raven Row ★☆☆☆☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e7b35ac) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

This show of nearly thirty artists makes a pitch at many extremes, failing to reach any.

things fall apart; the centre cannot hold at Tabula Rasa ★★★★☆

Advanced Views (view_652561e84c4ab) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_652561e7b35ac) template: Templates folder is not writable

Advanced Views (view_65875b3a6405b) template: Templates folder is not writable

These works could bear witness to the birth of a star or the heat death of the universe. The curators don’t know which.

×