Richard Hunt

Metamorphosis

★★★★★

On until 29 June 2025

Hunt’s sculptures of bent steel tubing and welded sheet metal are magnets for association. The slightest change to the vantage point uproots them from car plant Detroit to the top floors of Chrysler Building Manhattan. The Minotaur who ran amok in an outsider artist’s rust studio turns into a hunting trophy in the white cube’s exaggerated pristine. Futurism’s sharpest forms soften at the forest’s edge, only to rise once more after an unstoppable fire.

The confidence with which Hunt moulded European Modernist neologisms into an American vernacular is remarkable. His language evolved by rejection at first. Hunt’s early sculptures comprised wood alongside the later metallic mainstays. By the 1960s, however, such soft matter gave way to an angular, inorganic austerity. In self-referential quotation, however, chromed steel, polished bronze, and the blackest of coppers are plenty expressive. Hunt’s legacy is a dictionary for self-determination written in phrases as they were being invented: lyrics, laudations, and litanies. 


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

Maso Nakahara: Floating Through Time at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Maso Nakahara

Floating Through Time

★★★★☆

Biblical floods, the comet’s fall, and the odd tsunami mercilessly toss Nakahara’s protagonists about.

Sibylle Ruppert, Frenzy of the Visible at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Sibylle Ruppert

Frenzy of the Visible

★★★★☆

This is the fodder of DeviantArt and the last year’s AI engines.

Ksenia Pedan, Revision at Cell Project Space ★★★★☆

Ksenia Pedan

Revision

★★★★☆

Pedan’s paintings would rather be anything but.

Eva Kot’átková, The Czech pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Eva Kot’átková

The heart of a giraffe in captivity is twelve kilos lighter

★★☆☆☆

The giraffe’s taxidermied corpse is host to an ideological stunt.

Pope.L, Hospital at South London Gallery ★★★☆☆

Pope.L

Hospital

★★★☆☆

This project lands in the joke section of Animal Farm and not as a prophecy of the Jan 6th insurrection.

C. Rose Smith, Talking Back to Power at Autograph ★★☆☆☆

C. Rose Smith

Talking Back to Power

★★☆☆☆

There’s no conversation, no challenge, no win.

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