Paulina Olowska

Squelchy Garden Mules and Mamunas

★★★★☆

On until 6 January 2024

In this season’s fad for staging mythical woodland scenes in the gallery, Olowska’s project stands out for using the human form unadulterated. In outsized oil paintings, paper collages, and even on mannequins, Olowska models the forest adventures of a cast of five stereotypically Slavic children. They climb trees, sail down the mountain river on log rafts, and forage about in late winter landscapes. A series of quirky video objects set in hand-carved frames typical of Tatra mountain handicraft has them prostrated for the camera and provides a wild soundtrack to the exhibition.

Olowska is known for her investment in the mountain mythos and the 1930s artist villa in Poland which she renovated has inspired such interest in numerous others, including some of Europe’s best-known art collectors. But that the folk rituals – the springtime drowning of Marzanna, the straw effigy of winter and death, for example – flagged up by the gallery text check out does not compensate for the exhibition’s lacklustre curation. It should be within the resources of Pace and Olowska’s experience to advance her legend beyond the discretely marketable. Presented without context, the work enchants little.


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

Freudian Typo at Delfina Foundation ★★☆☆☆

Freudian Typo

Condensed Word, Displaced Flesh

★★☆☆☆

The problem of artists who confuse graphic design with art is that they also mistake sloganeering for critique.

Liliane Lijn: Seeds of Tomorrow at Sylvia Kouvali ★★★☆☆

Liliane Lijn

Seeds of Tomorrow

★★★☆☆

Are these dreams, floral fields, or psychedelic visions?

Karrabing Film Collective, Night Fishing with Ancestors at Goldsmiths CCA ★☆☆☆☆

Karrabing Film Collective

Night Fishing with Ancestors

★☆☆☆☆

Little separates this display from a human zoo complete with curators who occasionally kettle-prod the once noble savage into a spectacular rage.

Joseph Awuah-Darko, How is your day going? at Ed Cross ★★☆☆☆

Joseph Awuah-Darko

How is your day going?

★★☆☆☆

This project relies on layers of gimmicks and, sadly, they show through Awuah-Darko’s thick palette knife impasto.

Stephen Willats, Time Tumbler at Victoria Miro

Stephen Willats

Time Tumbler

★★★★☆

Willats orders fragments of time, matter, and space into data packets on one side of the flow chart and puts them to use on the other.

Michaël Borremans, The Monkey at David Zwirner ★★★★★

Michaël Borremans

The Monkey

★★★★★

Borremans toys with his subjects, his audience, and with art history.

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