Quentin James McCaffrey

★★☆☆☆

On until 3 October 2026

McCaffrey’s paintings of imagined European interiors decorated with imagined European art are the perfect postcards of an American mind for whom everything is ‘content’. The artist peppers his void copies of Regency interior designs with signifiers, also void, of what the originals may have once played host to. Early Renaissance is his favourite: van Eyck’s round mirrors abound, for example, yet the Arnolfini are missing.

The result fails to distinguish between the frame and what’s inside it. Frameless themselves, the paintings only encapsulate how McCaffrey’s native US — forever a colony — still understands “Europe” and its cultural hinterland. Can Europe still tell the difference?


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

Sosa Joseph, Pennungal at David Zwirner ★★★★★

Sosa Joseph

Pennungal: Lives of women and girls

★★★★★

The night, finally, recognises despair and witnesses infanticide.”

Cui Jie, Thermal Currents at Pilar Corrias ★☆☆☆☆

Cui Jie

Thermal Landscapes

★☆☆☆☆

The exhibition feels like a lecture on climate change sponsored by the designers of The Line, Saudi Arabia’s dystopian plan for a 110-mile linear city in the desert.

Linder, Danger Came Smiling at Hayward Gallery ★★★★☆

Linder

Danger Came Smiling

★★★★☆

Linder’s second-wave feminist propositions were ruthlessly superseded.

TJ Wilcox, Hiding in Plain Sight at Sadie Coles HQ ★★☆☆☆

TJ Wilcox

Hiding in Plain Sight

★★☆☆☆

Vanity proceeds in circles.

Eddie Ruscha, Seeing Frequencies at Cedric Bardawil ★☆☆☆☆

Eddie Ruscha

Seeing Frequencies

★☆☆☆☆

But either the curator or the artist should have known better.

Eva Rothschild at Modern Art ★★☆☆☆

Eva Rothschild

★★☆☆☆

These sculptures are too clean, too ordered, and too clever for no good reason.

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