Tommy Camerno

Delirious

★★☆☆☆

Curated by Antoine Schafroth
On until 28 January 2024

Is there a limit to the number of fads a single practice can channel? In this bijou, four-piece show, Camerno packs building site machismo, camp Technicolor nostalgia, generational warfare, and a dollop of old queer. 

Such indecision could be dismissed as youthful enthusiasm, but these inconsistencies are premeditated. Ornamental steel shapes hung from a monumental totem revel in laser-cut precision. They’re so far oblivious to the speckles of rust that will one day consume them. A ‘70s pin-up who appears on one canvas is till today unmoved by the decades which separate her from glory.

But the procession of time marked out in another painting is unstoppable. What’s left of the show are stage props that feed adolescent imaginations with false memories of the long-finished party. But even if Camerno’s complaints against the past were legitimate, his bet on the lasting value of his stock illustration tropes makes for poor politics.


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

The Music is Black at V&A East ★★☆☆☆

The Music is Black: A British Story

★★☆☆☆

Can there be a “black British music” without Britain or blackness?

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rozanskaite, Inflammation at Lithuanian pavilion Venice ★★★☆☆

Pakui Hardware, Maria Terese Rožanskaité

Inflammation

★★★☆☆

One of the novelties in Venice is the artwork that looks good but on reflection isn’t.

The Poplar Bestiary at Tondo Cosmic ★★★☆☆

Tamsin Morse, Kris Lock, Casper Scarth, et al.

The Poplar Bestiary

★★★☆☆

This menagerie comes with no humanly comprehensible challenge.

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.

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.

Robert Ryman, Line at David Zwirner ★★★☆☆

Robert Ryman

Line

★★★☆☆

The artist’s signature becomes a distress call.

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