comments are closed on this review, click here for worldwidereview home

Extended painting at Victoria Miro Gallery London >14 Feb
Reviews

From: RS
Category: Exhibitions
Date: 12 January 2004

Review

http://www.victoria-miro.com/nowshowing/ ExtendEnded Painting. Days like these, shows like this, wipe the smile from the artworld, and you realise painting has been rear ended by life, and that life doesn't have an insurance policy. Or something, its rhetorical nonsense of course.

Over and above this, extended painting was not a top quality show, it seemed like they were market testing a bunch of possibles, or assembling what they had left, a bit of a january sale, with a Turner Prized Grayson Perry, thrown in for star quality.

The show didn't address painting, let alone its extension in any but the most superficial way. Adriana Varejão was particularly bad, with a most unsubtle graph paper wound painting, which I optimistically hope was ironic emotive, but suspect was just reiterating cliches of her ethnicity.

What did all this say about painting? Nothing. Why was nothing huge, nothing direct on the wall or floor, nothing funny, nothing properly narrative or clever, or forward, or that we had not seen before, or messy/ugly, or shocking, or beautiful? Paiting needs extension. But these shows must push harder.

To lighten the negativity, Hiroko Nakao's painting was pretty/good, sort of an over the top material affair, involving a kind of mourning dress falling off the frame. It was a return to form because it was pleasing in an evasive way.

Tal R is an irritating and coolly meretricious artist. Anne Chu reminded me of provincial puppet art, and I missed the video (painting! extended!)by Jacco Olivier

comments are closed on this review, click here for worldwidereview home