The Shock of the Now - Issue #168
Afternoon All - Welcome to Issue 168 of The Shock of the Now! I hope you’re having an enjoyable week.
This week, the full issue includes eighteen Recommended Exhibitions, as well as twelve fresh Artist Opportunities.
I hope you enjoy Issue 168, and if so do forward it along! As always, questions and comments are welcome, so feel free to get in touch, H x
Recommended Exhibitions Opening This Week :
Nora Turato - ‘pool7’ Solo Exhibition - The Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall (9th April - 8th June)
The Institute of Contemporary Arts presents Nora Turato’s debut UK solo exhibition ‘pool7’.
“Taking place across the ICA’s Lower Galleries and Concourse, 'pool7' features a site-specific exhibition of newly commissioned work spanning performance, writing, graphic design, video and sound. In a three-part installation and accompanying performance – the artist’s most personal to date – Turato investigates our collective relationship to language, exposing the ideologies, failures and pleasures that characterise communication today.” - ICA
Achraf Touloub - ‘By a ciphered fall’ Solo Exhibition + ‘Neck of the wood’ Group Exhibition - Public Gallery, Aldgate (9th April - 3rd May, opening Wednesday 9th April, 6-8pm)
Public Gallery presents Achraf Touloub’s debut UK solo exhibition ‘By a ciphered fall’. Alongside, they present ‘Neck of the wood’, a group exhibition featuring Nils Alix‑Tabeling, Fungai Benhura, Emma Fineman, Gabriella Hirst, Simone Griffin, Dora Jeridi, Reika Takebayashi, Masaomi Yasunaga and Rafał Zajko.
“By a ciphered fall is the first UK solo exhibition of paintings and drawings on paper by Achraf Touloub, whose practice confronts the collapse of figure and ground, tracing the fissures between subjective and objective realities. Touloub explores the mapping of perception itself – an infinite circuitry of mediation, representation and imagination that questions our place within an increasingly complex visual and technological paradigm.” - Public Gallery
“Neck of the wood is a group exhibition of works by nine artists whose practices are rooted in folkloric tradition, ecofeminism, archaeological aesthetics, decolonial and queer theory. Across painting, sculpture, and living installation, this exhibition attends to the many meanings of ecology, demonstrating the capacity of ecocritical frameworks to examine the geographical, socioeconomic and cultural extractions and exclusions engendered by capitalist and colonial power structures.” - Public Gallery
Djordje Ozbolt - ‘Birdsongs of Praise’ Solo Exhibition - Herald St, Museum St, Bloomsbury (10th April - 17th May, opening Wednesday 9th April, 6-8pm)
Herald St presents Djordje Ozbolt’s solo exhibition ‘Birdsongs of Praise’.
“Djordje Ozbolt is celebrated for his playful, sometimes sardonic, practice that juxtaposes ephemera from popular culture, icons from art history, social commentary and personal narrative. Born in Belgrade, formerly Yugoslavia, Ozbolt – after living in London for over two decades – is now based in central Serbia, near the Rudnik mountain range, where he has created ten new paintings of fictional birds situated in wild landscapes that connect diverse phenomena such as Francis Picabia's renowned Transparency series, the Detroit music scene, Donald Duck and Top of the Tops.” - Herald St
David Salle - ‘Some Versions of Pastoral’ Solo Exhibition + Jordan Casteel - ‘A Presentation of Works’ Solo Exhibition - Thaddaeus Ropac, Mayfair (10th April - 8th June, opening Wednesday 9th April, 6-8pm)
Thaddaeus Ropac presents David Salle’s solo exhibition ‘Some Versions of Pastoral’. Alongside, the gallery presents three new paintings by Jordan Casteel, on view in the Ely Room.
“The paintings are the result of a significant recent innovation in Salle’s art: his use of artificial intelligence as a tool to create more dynamic and conceptually rich compositions than ever before. ‘I have long dreamed of a truly malleable, elastic pictorial space,’ Salle says. In these new paintings, the artist uses his own oeuvre – specifically, a group of paintings titled the Pastorals, executed in 1999 and 2000 – as raw material. Fed into a custom-made AI programme, the works are deliberately distorted to produce a variation on the pastoral scene. These freewheeling, sometimes bewildering images are then printed onto canvas to form the backdrops on which Salle paints. The result is a lyrical body of work that teems with new plasticity, and seems to respond to our viral visual world.” - Thaddaeus Ropac
Nazanin Noori - ‘THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST’ Solo Exhibition - Auto Italia, Bethnal Green (10th April - 22nd June, opening Thursday 10th April, 6-8pm)
Auto Italia presents Nazanin Noori’s debut UK solo exhibition ‘THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST’.
“The exhibition features newly commissioned works examining the emotional (im)mobilisation of the public in the context of political protest. Created in response to the death of Jina Amini and the uprisings that followed in the Islamic Republic of Iran, the exhibition reflects on the country’s sociopolitical landscape in recent years and explores the complexities of witnessing political events from afar—an experience shaped by paralysis, turmoil and longing. Through a new sculptural intervention, THE PARTY OF GOD / WELL DID WE LIVE, and a sound and spatial installation, IF THERE IS GOD NO ONE WILL BE DAMNED / A HOLLOW SONG SUSPENDED, Noori imagines a fictional post-revolutionary, post-fascist political landscape in which failing despots mourn their own demise.” - Auto Italia