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:

Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Jandyra Waters: We Lost Lots of Beautiful Things at Elizabeth Xi Bauer

Theodore Ereira-Guyer, Jandyra Waters

We Lost Lots of Beautiful Things

★★★★☆

The human mind is mimetic – all art is representation.

Max Boyla, Crying like a fire in the sun at Workplace ★★☆☆☆

Max Boyla

Crying like a fire in the sun

★★☆☆☆

Rothko’s abstractions are said to have induced tears in viewers overwhelmed by abstraction. Staring at the sun here, however, barely causes blindness.

A Comparative Dialogue Act, Luxemburg pavilion in Venice ★★☆☆☆

Andrea Mancini, Every Island

A Comparative Dialogue Act

★★☆☆☆

Stage fright is real. Cowardice is another thing altogether.

Leonardo Drew, Ubiquity II at South London Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

There are many ways to misunderstand entropy.

Meeson Jessica Pae, Secretions & Formations at Carl Kostyál ★★★★☆

Meeson Jessica Pae

Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

Oil paint can cause cancer.

Anna Barriball at Frith Street Gallery ★★☆☆☆

Anna Barriball

New Drawings

★★☆☆☆

The eyes may be the windows of the soul. To make an aphorism of the reverse needs more than shadow-play.

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