Museum Voorlinden, Buurtweg 90, 2244 AG Wassenaar, The Netherlands

Martin Puryear

Martin Puryear 2018 Voorlinden Museum installation view

The arrangement of the Voorlinden Museum’s current exhibition, Martin Puryear, surprises and makes it a delight to behold. Whereas the first half of the presentation is dominated by polychromed sculptures, natural wood surfaces predominate in the second half. A key feature of the layout is that it eschews a chronological ordering which urges viewers to seek out aspects that highlight alternate paths of development. Review by John Gayer

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out_sight, GF, 12, Changgyeonggung-ro 35ga-gil, Jongno-gu, Seoul, S.Korea

Mitra Saboury: Filthy Middles

Installation view, Mitra Saboury, Filthy Middles, Out_Sight Gallery, Seoul

Cleaning as we know it secures a homogeneous space that is removed of all otherness. However, when Mitra Saboury rubs, flosses, dusts and swipes things in her videos, her body as the subject of cleaning ends up revoltingly contaminated with the filth. Instead of eliminating dirt and grime, Saboury’s body becomes part of the mess. Text by exhibition curator, Jinho Lim.

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Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W 17th St, New York, NY 10011, USA

A Lost Future

A Lost Future, 2018 installation view

Currently at the Rubin Museum, New York, is A Lost Future, a yearlong exhibition on view through January 28th, 2019, showcasing explorations of the future, a theme that in this context is applied specifically to Bengal and South Asia by Shezad Dawood, Matti Braun, and the Otolith. Review by Louis Soulard

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Maureen Paley, 21 Herald Street, London E2 6JT

Kaye Donachie: Silent As Glass

Kaye Donachie, Silent As Glass, exhibition view, Maureen Paley, London 2018

Over the course of her career, Donachie’s work has developed from group depictions of nymph-like youths in a variety of natural settings, including campfires and caves, and hinting at tribal undertones in warm earthy colours, to the caged, closely framed portraits of women in domestic surroundings, even if these are only suggested, we see today. Review by Rosanna van Mierlo

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Pi Artworks, 55 Eastcastle Street, London W1W 8EG

Ipek Duben: in via incognita

Installation view: Ipek Duben, in via incognita, 2018.

“We were human beings once”; “Now he could start a new life”. These are two separate sentences from testimonials scrolling down on a large projection in Pi Artworks London’s back wall. The rest of the exhibition ‘in via incognita’ by Ipek Duben consists of what that semicolon represents: the in-between of having been human once and the possibility of starting a new life. Text by Gulnaz Can

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Wysing Arts Centre, Fox Rd, Cambridge CB23 2TX

more of an avalanche

Wysing Arts Centre, more of an avalanche, installation view, 2018

The exhibition takes the most ubiquitously right wing of pejorative terms – “snowflake” – as its conceptual springboard: the works here reclaim this insult from the political right by embracing and unabashedly exploring it. Empathy for your fellow humans and a willingness to speak up against pernicious injustice are embraced as strengths to celebrate, rather than mocked as signs of hypersensitivity and an inability to cope with ‘real life’. Review by Helena Haimes

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Imperial War Museum London, Lambeth Rd, London SE1 6HZ

Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11

Surveillance Camera with Plinth

The compulsion of artists to respond to certain events as they unfold, as exemplified by artists in Age of Terror: Art Since 9/11 at the Imperial War Museum, London, raises unavoidable questions concerning the relationship between aesthetics and morality. Review by Rowland Bagnall

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Art in General, 145 Plymouth St, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA

Zach Blas: Contra-Internet

Zach Blas, Jubilee 2033 (film still) 2018. Commissioned by Gasworks, London; Art in General, New York; and MU, Eindhoven

Zach Blas’ debut US solo show, Contra-Internet, at Art in General, New York, is a 28-minute long film, ‘Jubilee 2033’, inspired by the opening sequence of Derek Jarman’s seminal queer punk film ‘Jubilee’ (1978). Blas’ film imagines the jubilee of the internet in 2033 and evidences his broader endeavour ‘to explore contemporary technology in relationship to feminism and queerness’. Review by Grace Storey

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SCULPTURE AT/VITRINE Bermondsey Square

Charlie Godet Thomas: Cloud Study

Charlie Godet Thomas, Cloud Study, 2017. Commission for SCULPTURE AT Bermondsey Square, London.

Public sculpture usually dominates its surrounds; they are alien objects that often attempt to improve an area by shifting our focus away from it. Conversely, Charlie Godet Thomas’ ‘Cloud Study’, commissioned by SCULPTURE AT and located in Bermondsey Square, is a different species; it blends into the language of the street and manipulates it like a virus, deforming common visual cues and the messages they usually transmit. A sign, for example, is supposed to be read easily, but Thomas’ is ambiguous, and he tells us about our environment instead of distracting from it. Review by Matthew Turner

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Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, 337-338 Belvedere Rd, Lambeth, London SE1 8XX

Andreas Gursky

Installation image, Andreas Gursky at Hayward Gallery 25 January - 22 April 2018

Gursky captures the next step in the evolution of our sense of resolution, a way of seeing beyond increasing levels of detail, one which constantly flips back and fourth between the detail and the overview, perhaps imprinted in us as we zoom in and zoom out when using Google maps – in fractions of a second we can travel from our own home to the scale of the whole world and back again. Review by Matthew Turner

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Richard Saltoun Gallery, 41 Dover St, Mayfair, London W1S 4NS

Women Look at Women

Installation view, Women Look At Women, Richard Saltoun Gallery, London 15 February - 31 March 2018

The show opens with Renate Bertlmann’s ‘Transformations’ (1969/2013), a series of 53 black and white photographs which address an analysis of gender-specific social roles through the role-play sequence of staged photography. Indeed, the importance of inventing alter-egos in performance seems significant throughout the exhibition. Review by Matthew Cheale

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New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002, USA

2018 Triennial: Songs For Sabotage

Photo caption - Installation view, 2018 Triennial: “Songs for Sabotage”

While each painting on view in the 2018 Triennial: Songs For Sabotage, at the New Museum, New York, might pack a punch on its own, when grouped, this pervasive, globalized homogeneity only undercuts the swollen pomp ascribed to Songs of Sabotage by its organizers, and points, perhaps, to a more sinister condescension afoot in the galleries themselves. Review by Torey Akers

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