The Upcoming
  • Culture
    • Art
    • Cinema & Tv
      • Movie reviews
      • Film festivals
      • Shows
    • Food & Drinks
      • News & Features
      • Restaurant & bar reviews
      • Interviews & Recipes
    • Literature
    • Music
      • Live music
    • Theatre
  • Fashion & Lifestyle
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
  • What’s On
    • Art exhibitions
    • Theatre shows
  • Tickets
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Interviews
  • Competitions
  • Special events
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

CultureArt

Berndnaut Smilde: Antipode at the Ronchini Gallery

Berndnaut Smilde: Antipode at the Ronchini Gallery | Exhibition review
15 April 2014
Stephen Powell
Avatar
Stephen Powell
15 April 2014

Smilde is clever certainly, but reminds one of the sort of elaborate Victorian fraud one might have found at a fairground, claiming to have a living horse in a thimble or some such. Beyond his puff of smoke trick there doesn’t seem to be much to him. One wonders what happens to his clouds when they dissipate. Do cleaners mop them up? It would be an apt enough piece of criticism.

But forget the famous wet fart series, modern art of such relevance is presented in such disparate rare cloisters as Harper’s Bazaar and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. It is unseemly to take a hatchet to something into which so little effort has been put. A lot of his other work is not quite as silly and slightly more precious, which makes it endearing by comparison. It has to do with Kammerspiel, which is some kind of post-modern Ideal Home, and this is all good fun – something about reflections and modern isolation and so on, and it’s full of tricks with stereoscopes and tricks with perspective. So, as before, the Victorian magician with a dash of angst and a bit of sentimentality thrown in.

The works do at least engage the viewer physically and optically on a deeply personal level, which is one of the kernels of the philosophical effort, and for that they can be called a success. By working on so delicate a scale in some places, Smilde manages to remove some of what is vapid and grandiose in his Nimbus series. One never feels he is an artist dealing, as the gallery says, with “state[s] of being between construction and deconstruction”, but rather that his work deals with the monumental and the here and now, rendered with a deceptive sensibility. He is an artist who manages to evoke the present by allusion to it, and one hopes for more of this. His clouds, one suspects, were a bid for an attention he could then hold to do something more interesting. They have a tendency to disappear after a few minutes.

Stephen Powell

Berndnaut Smilde: Antipode is at Ronchini Gallery until 14th June 2014. For further information visit the gallery’s website here.

Related Itemsreview

More in Art

Decentralise at Somerset House Online

★★★★★
James White
Read More

No Holds Barred: The Life and Art of Matthew Lanyon

James White
Read More

Shai Baitel announced as inaugural artistic director of Modern Art Museum Shanghai

The editorial unit
Read More

The National Gallery online: Lockdown’s top 20 most viewed paintings

The editorial unit
Read More

Art 2021: London’s best virtual exhibitions from home

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Ten artistic depictions of the Christmas story through the ages

James White
Read More

Five gifts for art lovers this Christmas

Emma-Jane Betts
Read More

Five alternative art exhibitions for Christmas 2020

Catherine Sedgwick
Read More

Sensing the Unseen: Step into Gossaert’s Adoration at the National Gallery

★★★★★
Anna Souter
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap
  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • London’s best pizzas for takeaway and delivery
    Food & Drinks
  • The Year Earth Changed
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Cruise – Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Steelers: The World’s First Gay and Inclusive Rugby Club
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Distance Remaining – Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Cruise – Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • A Splinter of Ice at Cheltenham Everyman Theatre Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Birdy at Wilton’s Music Hall Online
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • For the Sake of Vicious
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Mare of Easttown
    ★★★★★
    sky
  • Cruise – Online
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • Birdy at Wilton’s Music Hall Online
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Mare of Easttown
    ★★★★★
    sky
  • Me You Madness
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • SYML – Dim | EP review
    ★★★★★
    Album review
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Ernesto Cánovas: An American Trilogy at the Halcyon Gallery | Exhibition review
Oh My Sweet Land at the Young Vic | Theatre review