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:

Lydia Gifford, Low Anchored Cloud at Alma Pearl ★★☆☆☆

Lydia Gifford

Low Anchored Cloud

★★☆☆☆

Oil paint applied so thickly that it’s a miracle the canvases don’t bring the gallery walls down with them

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

Meeson Jessica Pae

Secretions & Formations

★★★★☆

Oil paint can cause cancer.

Sylvie Fleury, S.F. at Sprüth Magers ★★★☆☆

Sylvie Fleury

S.F.

★★★☆☆

In Fleury’s car workshop cum womenswear boutique, everything is ready-made and ready-to-wear. But you can’t touch any of it and you certainly can’t afford it.

Turner Prize 2024 at Tate Britain ★★☆☆☆

Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson, Jasleen Kaur, Delaine Le Bas

Turner Prize 2024

★★☆☆☆

Even the artists approach this edition with ennui.

When Forms Come Alive at Hayward Gallery ★★☆☆☆

When Forms Come Alive

★★☆☆☆

This exhibition cannot decide if it’s a tourist attraction or a serious examination of sculpture’s relationship with movement.

Jennifer Bartlett, In the House at Pippy Houldsworth ★★★★☆

Jennifer Bartlett

In the House

★★★★☆

“Sky”, “roof”, “31”, a mantra turns into paint.

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