Tacita Dean

Black, Green, Green and White

★☆☆☆☆

On until 22 November 2025

Phoning it in makes little sense in the age of the WhatsApp message, and film studies lost to video a long time ago. Dean was once good at this transition. This two-segment exhibition – consisting of inconsequential light paintings and film sprocket drawings in the gallery’s main space and a torturous 16mm film portrait of another film master in the basement – makes no effort on behalf of its subjects, let alone the medium.

Dean’s slate drawings and Polaroid doodles relate to Shakespeare, but one wouldn’t know it. One wouldn’t need to because such imagery is perfectly serviceable student dorm decoration. In the gallery, however, it is so quotidian that it barely distinguishes itself from the degree show.

Worse, though, is the forty-minute-long film portrait of the Ukrainian photographer Boris Mikhailov and his wife Vita. The subjects, whom Dean stages in the shadow of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, inspire interest inherently. This could have been a tender portrait of an ageing couple’s stillness, or any number of things, really. But Dean gives the Mikhailovs both too little and too much to do in her frame. The result captivates before revealing itself to be dead boring.


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

Oh, the Storm at Rodeo ★☆☆☆☆

Oh, the Storm

★☆☆☆☆

This exhibitions is trying to explain the concept of ‘crazy paving’ to a blind man. It’s impossible to tell where a work ends and the wall begins.

Mohammed Z. Rahman, A Flame is a Petal at Phillida Reid ★★★☆☆

Mohammed Z. Rahman

A Flame is a Petal

★★★☆☆

Rahman’s zine hand makes this make-believe explicit but not plausible.

Dominique Fung, (Up)Rooted, at Massimo de Carlo ★★☆☆☆

Dominique Fung

(Up)Rooted

★★☆☆☆

All this tries to be macabre and surreal like in Bosch or Miyazaki but is instead laughably twee.

France-Lise McGurn, Strawberry at Massimodecarlo ★☆☆☆☆

France-Lise McGurn

Strawberry

★☆☆☆☆

McGurn has created the visual equivalent of elevator music.

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

Christopher Aque, Alexandre Khondji

★★★★★

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

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, It Will End In Tears at Barbican Curve ★★☆☆☆

Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

It Will End In Tears

★★☆☆☆

With the right lighting, this story could be a mid-century colonial classic.

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