Tesfaye Urgessa

Prejudice and Belonging

★★★★★

Curated by Lemn Sissay
On until 24 November 2024

Urgessa’s collective portraits exude unsettling calm. Groups pose for the painter having arranged themselves as though for an anthropologist’s camera. The bodies on the canvases are half undressed, half hidden among ritual but contemporary objects that make up symbols of deep time and even deeper knowing.

The artist’s hand is present in these pictures, too, along with his arm, torso, and in one painting his buttocks. Some of the subjects’ faces turn out to be mere reproductions, as if collected from some forgotten atlas. Others are contorted in love, death, or merely life and it is no longer obvious if Urgessa walked in on a wedding feast or some backroom orgy. 

Perhaps this is a timeless idyl, perhaps some personal and tragic stories make up this dance of body parts. But even when doubt becomes overwhelming, Ugressa grants his subject the command of his canvas. In the politically rigged Venice, this gesture is as necessary as air.


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

Medusa at Union Gallery ★★★☆☆

Ada Bond, Rebecca Davy, Karen Densha, Sam Owen Hull, Hilary Jack, Rachel Goodyear, Evita Ziemele, et al.

Medusa

★★★☆☆

Interpreting a tale this grotesque, ugly, and venomous will take thousands of years

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.

Megan Rooney, Echoes & Hours at Kettle’s Yard ★★☆☆☆

Megan Rooney

Echoes & Hours

★★☆☆☆

For all this bravado, Rooney’s compositions offer only a very surface experience of abstraction.

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

Leonardo Drew

Ubiquity II

★★☆☆☆

There are many ways to misunderstand entropy.

Xie Nanxing, Hello, Portrait! at Thomas Dane ★★★★☆

Xie Nanxing

Hello, Portrait!

★★★★☆

Looking at Xie’s portraits is a little like wearing a virtual reality headset over only one eye.

Marina Abramović, 7 Deaths of Maria Callas ★☆☆☆☆

Marina Abramović

7 Deaths of Maria Callas

★☆☆☆☆

Abramović wants to destroy all performance and all women until she holds the monopoly over stage death.

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