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:

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Black, Green, Green and White

★☆☆☆☆

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Yo Nishimura: Dislocation at Sadie Coles ★☆☆☆☆

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★☆☆☆☆

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The Music is Black at V&A East ★★☆☆☆

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★★☆☆☆

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Donna Huddleston, Company at White Cube ★★★★☆

Donna Huddleston

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★★★★☆

A palpably stubborn nature unites Huddleston’s women

Thibault Aedy, Dilara Koz at Filet ★★★☆☆

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Caressed and Polished and Drained and Washed

★★★☆☆

These ideas can’t last beyond the pop-up show’s closing date.

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

Christo

Early Works

★★★★☆

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

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