01/2022

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Seasonal Highlights

Some favourites from the festive period!

OLIVIA STERLING Episode 7
Really Rough Scrubbing Brush
17 Sep–14 Nov 2021.

Commissioned by the CCA this playful set of works focuses on the figure altering act of tanning. However upon further inspection these graphic paintings zone in on racist micro and macro-aggressions,

“Through slap-stick, absurdity, and the language of cartoons her brightly saturated canvases depict abstracted limbs, and the interaction is variously violent and ambiguous” “Sterling has developed a bold and confronting visual style that moves through dark humour to examine tropes of race and body image in the UK now”

GCCA

KAWS Spoke Too Soon, Skarstedt Gallery. Nov 5 – Dec 11.

In Kaws’ fourth solo show, we see his beloved cast of CHUM and COMPANION weighted down by exhaustion and enclosed in claustrophobic landscapes. We both commiserate and identify with their woeful state bringing this show to be arguably his most sentimental. What’s also quite novel here is this growing sense of self referentiality that Kaws channels through his iconographic figures.

Genieve Figgis, Immortal Reflections, Almine Rech. Nov 4- Dec 11.

The reimagined and rather ghoulish canonical paintings by Figgis are summarised perfectly by Alison M. Gingeras,

“The tension between what is depicted and what is left to the imagination—character, ambiance, genre, plot—goad the viewer to expand upon the implicitly elaborate shared social scenarios in each of these scenes, in which imagined and real friendship, royal kinship, or other fibres of the social fabric are interwoven.” 

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Scott Kahn, Solo Show at Almine Rech. Nov 18 – Dec 18.

Kahn’s “visual diary” blends a number of disciplines to coordinate a sort of other worldly yet entirely accessible landscape. The awkwardly distanced view on these subdued scenes of nature somehow feel the furthest thing from natural. For me, the subtle surrealist feel recalls that of Tanguy and Magritte whilst also being effortlessly contemporary.

Deborah Segun How Not to Fall in Love, Beers London. Dec 5- Jan 15.

Segun has solidified her style through her carefully constructed vibrant pastel pallet to communicate restful intimate portraits. Her large scale canvases invite the viewer to follow the curvatures of her figures, where their calming features and heavy eyelids create a sense of peace. Despite the sort of cubist abstraction that she harnesses, the considered colour scheme makes these bold tones feel overwhelmingly serene.

Imogen Haisman