Tarek Lakhrissi

Spit

★★★☆☆

On until 2 November 2024

The devil’s greatest trick, said Baudelaire, was to convince us he did not exist. His fellow poet Lakhrissi is no trickster. A giant daemon mask stands in the centre of his show of pencil drawings and luminous glass ornaments. Biblical horns, wings, and wagging tongues sparsely mark the walls as though they fell from Apollinaire’s rain cloud.

But writing poetry is hard enough. Lakhrissi’s pencil works brim with childlike, pre-verbal charm that tickles a literary tradition. His wall trinkets, however, are garish. They betray the artist’s indifference to symbols and, worse, his sculptural medium. 


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

Rheim Alkadhi, Templates for Liberation at ICA ★★☆☆☆

Rheim Alkadhi

Templates for Liberation

★★☆☆☆

When truth and artifice are so bluntly opposed, what use is aesthetics?

Alvaro Barrington, Grandma’s Land at Sadie Coles ★★★☆☆

Alvaro Barrington

Grandma’s Land

★★★☆☆

The party slumps into a half-voiced political complaint and never recovers. This is what happens when instead of living culture, we ‘celebrate’ it.

Deimantas Narkevičus, The Fifer at Maureen Paley ★★☆☆☆

Deimantas Narkevičus

The Fifer

★★☆☆☆

In the age of the decolonial, this is as quaint as it is outmoded

Nanténé Traoré at Sultana and Amanda Wilkinson ★★☆☆☆

Nanténé Traoré

She says it's the high energy

★★☆☆☆

Bodies clash with lights in front of Traoré’s Narcissus camera.

Siobhan Liddell, Been and Gone at Hollybush Gardens ★★☆☆☆

Siobhan Liddell

Been and Gone

★★☆☆☆

A twee aesthetics native to a grandmother’s mantlepiece collection of tourist souvenirs and devotional figurines.

Your Ghosts Are Mine at Palazzo Franchetti ★★★☆☆

Your Ghosts Are Mine: Expanded Cinemas, Amplified Voices

★★★☆☆

This attempt at building pan-Arabic film aesthetics falls prey to the art technician’s trickery.

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