Helen Marten has been garnering a reputation for expansive sculptural installations in which she orchestrates the buzz of conversation between suggestive form and perverted function, material and finish, image and effect, glamour and illusion. What preoccupies her is the range of qualities inherent in the products that populate our environment. How is it that we can largely ignore the embedded intelligence and technical know-how in things and yet still make use of them? And if we do notice these aspects of an object, what can they tell us about the political viewpoints and cultural attitudes

Although David Batchelor’s three-dimensional objects and photographs have often reflected on the condition of painting, this was the first time that he has exhibited works that are, in fact, paintings. Yet as flat things on the wall, the new pieces in this show (which was called “2D3D: David Batchelor”) talk back to the idea of sculpture in a way that is both incisive and comic. They also prompt some basic questions about the relationship between abstraction and figuration—these works operate in both registers—and invite us to think why that relationship (or at any rate its messier