Ron Nagle

Conniption

★★★★★

On until 6 January 2024

Less is more, as the saying goes. Nagle’s porcelain and resin maquettes, none larger than a shoe box, are the bare minimum. The sculptures gesture at fantasy worlds in the making. One has an erupting volcano, another the beach. Some are cross-sections of domains filled with gold ore and cumulus clouds. Each is a land promised.

But it’s the eighth day in this multiverse and these worlds are unfinished, as though assembled by a video game designer in a hurry. The volumes and shapes are only roughly to scale. The copy-and-paste textures are the materials’ default and merely trick the eye. Their setting, as though in an austere but high-end jewellery store, completes the illusion. It’s all good enough and as good as it gets. The only snag is that this bliss gives way to rage every Monday.


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

Yi To, Terminal Lucidity at Project Native Informant ★★★★☆

Yi To

Terminal Lucidity

★★★★☆

All evidence erodes eventually.

Diego Marcon, Dolle at Sadie Coles HQ ★★★☆☆

Diego Marcon

Dolle

★★★☆☆

Idle work became indistinguishable from leisure, vegetative time-passing from family life.

Liquid Tongues at the Polish pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Bogna Burska and Daniel Kotowski

Liquid Tongues

★★☆☆☆

Liquid Tongues is a collaboration between two artists and a community choir of deaf and hearing people. Despite drawing on many ideas, the film lands a generic, corporate look. Were Burska and Kotowski not aware of the rich history of linguistic…

Lara Favaretto at Biblioteca Marciana in Venice ★☆☆☆☆

Lara Favaretto

★☆☆☆☆

Burning the art student’s undergraduate essays won’t solve the problem.

Anastasia Pavlou, Reader at Hot Wheels ★★☆☆☆

Anastasia Pavlou

Reader, Part 2; The Reader Reads Words in Sentences

★★☆☆☆

In this game of aesthetic cognition, the idea which survives is of the artist thinking.

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

Ksenia Pedan

Revision

★★★★☆

Pedan’s paintings would rather be anything but.

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