The meal deal: ‘Hovering on the Edge’ at Timothy Taylor, Judith Bernstein at Emalin, ‘With Urgency’ at Ilenia

All week I’ve had the two bank holidays and Eloise Hendy’s latest column on my mind. Most people outside the art world, and even many people inside of it, think it’s just hanging paintings and hosting parties. The reality is there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. Everyone has their horror stories of shows that only came together in the final few minutes ahead of the opening through the miracle-working of the shippers, the technicians, the cleaners, the gaffers and the interns. Just remember this while you’re browsing galleries this weekend.

‘Hovering on the Edge’ at Timothy Taylor

Willem de Kooning is an artist’s artist, at least, that’s the view of this group show at Timothy Taylor, which places his late painting Untitled XVI, (1983) alongside that of a number of artists working in his wake. The idea is that de Kooning tempered the hard-edged, hard-drinking abstract expressionism of the mid-20th Century with fluidity and a hint of figuration, and that he combined playfulness with considered composition. The best case for his influence on contemporary art is made with a single Cecily Brown, There is a land of pure delight, (2011), it’s easy to see de Kooning’s influence in Brown’s own carefree but carefully-constructed work. Likewise, in Richard Patterson’s Ghosts (2023) and Landon Metz’ and David Reed’s paintings, and in John Chamberlain’s bent metal sculptures. I had questions about a few of the works’ relation to de Kooning, but on the whole, I’m convinced.

Judith Bernstein at Emalin

Judith Bernstein’s screw paintings are still potent. I last saw her work back in 2013 when she painted a two-story dick mural across the ICA’s gallery wall (the working sketch is on display in the Emalin office). A lot of time has passed since then, and I had thought that the aggressively phallic imagery might flop. But you have to remember it’s not about dicks: it’s about American society, and unconscious thoughts, and art making, and graffiti, and the bonds that are made when taboos are broken. It just happens to be that dicks feature in all of these. The two ‘word drawings’, TRUTH and CHAOS, were made in the 1990s when Bernstein moved from studying toilet graffiti to cable news channels. Again, they’re heavy-handed, but they’re reminders that the world can’t be reduced down to these two words. I’m glad that the gallery went with a sparse installation, it fits Bernstein’s sledgehammer approach to signification and it forces you to really pay attention to her charcoal curves, scrawls and ever-present, ostentatious signature.

‘With Urgency’ at Ilenia

With Urgency explores the absurdity of artists learning to work together. Three friends, Daria Blum, Guendalina Cerruti and Mary Stephenson, video themselves over several months as they develop the video itself. The background to their half-scripted performance is the low-level tension between their conflicting desires to complete their shared project and to retain their individual personalities. The effect of self-reflection and close collaboration seems to have caused them to regress: they reenact childhood games, running around, dressing up, pretending to drive, bickering. Nothing seems settled: the scenes bounce between building sites, country roads and abandoned gardens. Their dialogue is stunted: most of what they express is simply the bare essentials for filmmaking, “ready? Yes. Ok? Good. Now? Yes, run. Now? Yes.” The points where the tension breaks – due to a muttered complaint, a glare, a sigh, a refusal to participate – are the most captivating because this is where their personalities stand out. Their collaborations worked out, this time, the question is whether they’ll take it up again.