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:

Wilhelm Sasnal at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Wilhelm Sasnal

★★★☆☆

Only in flights of anger does this vision come close to becoming believable.

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett, >anticorpo< at Galerie Neu and Emalin ★★★★☆

Manfred Pernice, Megan Plunknett

>anticorpo<

★★★★☆

Such ‘80s nostalgia for meaning before history’s end is a comfort blanket.

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji at Sweetwater and Studio M ★★★★★

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

Aesthetic cognition or crossword puzzles only rarely bring such perverse pleasure.

Medusa at Union Gallery ★★★☆☆

Ada Bond, Rebecca Davy, Karen Densha, Sam Owen Hull, Hilary Jack, Rachel Goodyear, Evita Ziemele, et al.

Medusa

★★★☆☆

Interpreting a tale this grotesque, ugly, and venomous will take thousands of years

Jasper Marsalis,  \m/’ at Emalin ★★★★☆

Jasper Marsalis

\m/'

★★★★☆

The circus is in town, its acts are the infrastructure of contentment.

Soufiane Ababri, Their mouths at Barbican ★★☆☆☆

Soufiane Ababri

Their mouths were full of bumblebees

★★☆☆☆

Ababri’s paintings for the Grindr generation are more cartoonish than they are from life.

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