Nicole Eisenman

What Happened

★★★☆☆

On until 14 January 2024

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:

transfeminisms Chapter IV at Mimosa House ★☆☆☆☆

transfeminisms Chapter IV: Care and Kinship

★☆☆☆☆

Lack of care for the artefact is a strange USP for a gallery.

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

Trevor Yeung

Courtyard of Attachments

★★★☆☆

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

Michael Andrew Page, Claustrum at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Michael Andrew Page

Claustrum

★★★★☆

Page’s tent, brain, and the cathedral take the same form for a pretty good reason.

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rozanskaite, Inflammation at Lithuanian pavilion Venice ★★★☆☆

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rožanskaité

Inflammation

★★★☆☆

One of the novelties in Venice is the artwork that looks good but on reflection isn’t.

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

Christo

Early Works

★★★★☆

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

Victor Man: The Absence That We Are at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Victor Man

The Absence That We Are

★★★☆☆

Man’s colours are only a small nudge of the wheel from Tretchikoff’s infamous portrait of the Chinese girl.

×