Șerban Savu

What Work Is

★★★★☆

Curated by Ciprian Mureșan
On until 24 November 2024

What happens to the worker when work has no purpose? In a series of social-realist paintings so extensive that to not think of the labour which went into making them is impossible, Savu traces the as-yet imaginary terminus of Romania’s socialist utopia. 

This Elysium is part panel house block, half Roman ruin. Mosaic reconstructions and faux archaeology spread from the canvas into museum-like models that the Socialist Republic of Romania would have been proud to exhibit in the same location in the 1960s. Savu’s t-shirt-clad 21st-century gentlemen explorers, however, betray his installation’s timeline. 

These future young men have little to do but look ill at ease in their leisure. The reason comes clear at an offsite location where workers make artefacts for Savu’s production under the gaze of Venice’s leisurely tourists. This offshoring project, one fancies, drives these labourers envious of their future selves which in Savu’s archaeological fancy will face only themselves.


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

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

Lydia Gifford

Low Anchored Cloud

★★☆☆☆

Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

Jan Gatewood, Group Relations at Rose Easton ★☆☆☆☆

Jan Gatewood

Group Relations

★☆☆☆☆

Such thin metaphors could only have come from LA.

Justin Caguiat, Dreampop at Modern Art ★★★★☆

Justin Caguiat

Dreampop

★★★★☆

This is the sort of exhibition that makes a critic question the quality of their judgment.

Richard Hunt, Metamorphosis at White Cube ★★★★★

Richard Hunt

Metamorphosis

★★★★★

A dictionary for self-determination written in phrases as they were being invented.

Herman Chong, The Book of Equators at Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Herman Chong

The Book of Equators

★★☆☆☆

Chong was probably reading some epic while painting his Equator pictures.

Haegue Yang, Leap Year at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Haegue Yang

Leap Year

★★☆☆☆

The funfair is shuttered, long live the fair.

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