Tate Modern, London
Himid’s paintings, soundworks and sculptures are haunted by historical pain, fizzing with colour – and too polite by far
Those wags at Tate Modern! They spend 21 years telling you figurative painting is dead: 21 years of film projections, dance and guys screaming on monitors. Then they give an old-school figurative painter a retrospective and tell us this is what modern looks like now.
Lubaina Himid’s exhibition in the museum’s Blavatnik Building, where time and performance-based art usually rule, is full of the kind of jolly postmodernist pop you usually see at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. The vibe this museum projects is heavy and apocalyptic, in keeping with its daunting industrial scale. But this artist is all whimsy. She starts her retrospective with a set of paintings about DIY. Safety instructions from a manual are written out next to pictures of cogs, nails and tools. On speakers nearby, in one of several sound art pieces Himid has created with Magda Stawarska-Beavan, these instructions are repeated. It’s like a very, very soft version of Jasper Johns. And it turns out this whole show is about as dangerous as a painting of a hammer. It doesn’t escape from art into life.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3cE6pwq
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