Urs Fischer

Scratch & Sniff

★★★☆☆

On until 26 October 2024

If a painting could scream “excess”, Fischer would turn it into a series. A dozen large mixed-media panels collect the detritus of a post-Baudrillardian age: supermarket wares, car adverts, Amazon book listings, and newspaper headlines. These objects obscure pastures of abstract pastels laid in well-defined colours. 

A vinyl photo print which covers the gallery’s not-inconsiderable footprint reproduces the painter’s Californian studio. He has an atelier on each coast, and this isn’t even his first show this year with his London gallery. There’s market demand, but this barrage of signs is of the artist’s own making. 

Fischer does not admit responsibility. In the pictures, however, a lone male figure drowns in all this clutter. His body lies in absurd submission to the surplus that suffocates him. It’s too early for a funeral, yet there’s no other reprieve in this commodity cult.


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

Tamara Henderson, Green in the Grooves at Camden Art Centre ★★★★☆

Tamara Henderson

Green in the Grooves

★★★★☆

The whole thing feels like a remake of Wind in the Willows directed by a garden gnome.

Yuki Nakayama, After the Rain at A.I. Gallery ★☆☆☆☆

Yuki Nakayama

After the Rain

★☆☆☆☆

Can an installation be too site-specific?

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

Alia Farid, Elsewhere at Chisenhale ★★★☆☆

Alia Farid

Elsewhere

★★★☆☆

There is no answer in the work. Its cause and the object become enmeshed in a bland, exoticized mess. 

Sophie Huckfield: Lady Ludd at Outpost, Norwich ★★☆☆☆

Sophie Huckfield

Lady Ludd

★★☆☆☆

Huckfield crowbars made-up heroes into past revolutions to pose as the saviour in the next one.

James White: Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon at Anthony Wilkinson ★★★★☆

James White

Every Corner Abandoned Too Soon

★★★★☆

Paint that does this to a pile of plastic coat hangers contends with any reality.

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