reviews

  • View of “Georges Adéagbo,” 2020.

    View of “Georges Adéagbo,” 2020.

    Georges Adéagbo

    Barbara Wien

    Georges Adéagbo is a one-trick artist. But the outcome of that trick is endlessly variable. His method consists of making assemblages of objects: mostly books, magazines, newspaper articles, record covers, and wooden sculptures, but also the occasional pair of underwear. These items are pinned to the wall, as in a teenager’s bedroom, with what looks like a contrived messiness: Everything’s askew, with no apparent relation between one thing and another. So open does Adéagbo’s structure appear that for a second you might think you can just pick anything up, perhaps even take it home. But then it

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  • Sophie Reinhold, Das kann das leben kosten (That Could Cost You Your Life), 2020, oil on marble powder on jute, 55 × 43 1⁄4".

    Sophie Reinhold, Das kann das leben kosten (That Could Cost You Your Life), 2020, oil on marble powder on jute, 55 × 43 1⁄4".

    Sophie Reinhold

    Contemporary Fine Arts Galerie (CFA)

    The title of one of Sophie Reinhold’s paintings here, Gewöhne dich nicht daran, 2019—referencing an anti-drug addiction slogan of the German Democratic Republic and translating as “Don’t get used to it”—might also apply to her purposely elliptical practice. The Berlin-based artist frequently works up pale paintings on a ground of jute and marble dust, with pieces of canvas cut out and stitched onto their surfaces to create ghostly figurations, like shallow reliefs on a facade. In this show, “Das kann das Leben kosten” (That Could Cost You Your Life), the chimerical expanse of the opening painting,

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