Vasari Art Codex

rate_review review schedule Apr 13, 2026 visibility 31 link 3 artists, 1 gallery

Comment | Catherine Opie shows us that in dark times, looking for joy can be radical

The artist Catherine Opie is currently the subject of a major three-decade portrait survey, 'To Be Seen', at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The exhibition highlights Opie’s career-long commitment to representing the LGBTQ+ community, specifically the leather dyke scene in Los Angeles, through a lens that balances defiance with playfulness. Even her most provocative works, such as the 1993 self-portrait featuring a domestic scene carved into her back, are revealed to contain elements of humor and historical allusion that counter the despair of the AIDS crisis and personal heartbreak.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 16, 2026 visibility 4 link 4 artists, 2 galleries

Gardar Eide Einarsson Leaves You in the Dark

Gardar Eide Einarsson’s latest exhibition at Maureen Paley’s East London space presents a haunting exploration of dissociation and coded information. The show features two distinct series: 'Closed Caption,' a collection of monochrome black gouache paintings featuring isolated subtitles from films, and 'Incendiary Test Area,' a set of hyperrealistic woodblock prints created in collaboration with master Shoichi Kitamura. These prints depict the interiors of mock 'Japanese' houses built by the US Army for fire-bombing tests during World War II.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 14, 2026 visibility 4 link 5 artists, 1 gallery

Locating Luigi Ghirri

Fashion photographer Alessio Bolzoni and film director Luca Guadagnino have collaborated on 'Felicità', a new book and exhibition at Thomas Dane Gallery featuring 45 previously unseen color photographs by the late Italian master Luigi Ghirri. The project is divided into two portfolios: the first focuses on intimate, abstract details of found objects and surfaces in Modena, while the second expands into larger vistas and populated spaces across Italy during the 1980s.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 17, 2026 visibility 3 link 2 artists, 2 galleries

Racheal Crowther review – unnerving installation attacks your mind … and your nostrils!

London-based artist Racheal Crowther has transformed the Chisenhale Gallery into a sensory-heavy, paranoid environment for her first institutional solo exhibition. The installation centers on a decommissioned U.S. military mobile health unit, once used during the 2018 Novichok decontamination efforts, set against walls painted in "drunk tank pink." The experience is defined by an aggressive olfactory component—a chemical cocktail of powdered milk scents and hexadecanal, a molecule found on infants' heads known to manipulate human aggression.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 15, 2026 visibility 3 link 3 artists, 2 galleries

Review: “Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try” at the Holocaust Museum Houston

The Holocaust Museum Houston is currently hosting "Boris Lurie: Nothing To Do But To Try," an exhibition focusing on the early works of the Holocaust survivor and NO!art movement founder. Organized by the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the show highlights Lurie’s "War Series," featuring paintings, drawings, and never-before-seen ephemera created as a means of processing the trauma of his imprisonment in camps like Buchenwald. The works, ranging from the immediate post-war period to decades later, serve as a visceral record of memory and loss, including tributes to his family members murdered in the Rumbula Forest massacre.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 14, 2026 visibility 5 link 1 artist

‘As If’ by Isabel Waidner, Reviewed

Isabel Waidner’s latest novel, 'As If', follows the surreal intersection of two actors, Lewis and Korine, who share an uncanny resemblance and wives with the same name. After meeting in a Central London sublet, the pair decide to swap lives: the younger Korine takes over a high-stakes audition for the grieving Lewis, while Lewis assumes Korine’s domestic and financial burdens. Set against the brutalist backdrop of London’s Barbican and Golden Lane estate, the narrative uses this identity swap to explore the thin line between performance and reality.

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rate_review review schedule Apr 13, 2026 visibility 6

REVIEW: Now is not forever, when art mimics reality

Theresa-Anne Mackintosh’s solo exhibition, "Now is not Forever," recently debuted at the Wits Art Museum (WAM), featuring a provocative blend of older paintings and new sculptures. The show centers on anthropomorphic figures and the erasure of senses, notably in the "hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil" series, where body parts are painted over to symbolize the avoidance of moral decay. These works, alongside vivid sculptures representing the artist's alter egos, challenge viewers to look past aesthetic surfaces to confront the inherent chaos and dysfunction of contemporary society.

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