Two new art shows along the Hackney Road right at the end of October and if the truth be told, neither of them demanded a clambering towards the keyboard to urgently bash out words. Canadian born artist Sin Wai Kin‘s portraits at the strangely named Soft Opening gallery, a rather minimal show in the rather substantial gallery and on for a couple of months as well, you kind of wonder why it needs to be on for so long? I expected more, I’m kind of thinking I could just view this on YouTube and yes I know were dealing with that debate about galleries and digital art and gallery wall space and the environment in which you view art, a debate that usually goes on around the corner at Annka Kultys Gallery and I hear all the arguments about how digital art on a monitor hung like a more traditional painting in as valid and maybe even more so (I hear it, I don’t agree with it), but hey, debate aside, it just kind of left me cold, it left me thinking so what? The exhibition left me feeling unengaged and yes, I know the image is slowly moving if you hang around long enough and well, I just expected something more, I expected something, oh I don’t know, just something… Yes, I know I’m just a tired old painter, I can get that this is “the artist’s exploration of storytelling as a means to interrogate binaries and create fantasy narratives, which interrupt normative processes of desire, identification, and objectification. Drawing on personal experiences of existing beyond categories, Sin’s practice pivots around performance, moving image, writing and print to question idealised images, constructed identities and binary conceptions of consciousness” but all I saw was five or six TV sized digital screens hung on the gallery wall and some “nice” enough images that really didn’t make me want to engage or investigate that much further that that initial couple of minutes looking at each one.,.    

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If you want to know more then “extending their ongoing project of using drag as a medium of embodied speculative fiction, Sin presents a multitude of characters who personify different themes and research. Found across various existing films and performances, these imagined figures reappear in different contexts, creating new constellations in the artist’s expanding universe with each work. Drawing on traditional roles in Cantonese and Peking Opera, Sin presents five characters in nearly life-size filmed portraits: “The Universe”, a warrior god embodying the binary of an individual and its context; “Change”, the embodiment of the constant of change; “Wai King”, an exploration of unbridled masculinity; “The Construct”, the embodiment of the binary of good and evil, and “The Storyteller,” Sin’s iconic personification of the role of storytelling in culture. Upon close reflection, these living portraits reveal the strain of holding one position — or existing as a single selfhood.

Theatricising the walls of the gallery, softly folded and flowing white velvet curtains run across all three walls of Portraits from floor to ceiling. Displayed in front of this, each of these new silent films loops continuously. The gesture of lifting screens onto the walls situates them within a lineage of painting, thereby historicising new narratives and identities via a continually expanding and developing cast of characters. The films themselves each reference a famous artwork from history, including Man Ray, Kiki with African Mask (1926); Caravaggio, Narcissus (1597–1599), Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair (1940); Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa (1503) and Lu Zhi, Chuang Tzu Dreaming Of A Butterfly (Ming Dynasty). Inserting their characters into an art historical lineage allows Sin to self-historicise their own practice while interrogating the positionality of the storyteller as a creator of histories. By blurring the boundaries of fantasy and reality in this way, the artist seeks to challenge the hegemonic narratives of history and asserts that image-making offers both the representation and creation of reality.

Enveloped in recognisable chroma green, the colour used in filmmaking that enables an actor to be lifted out of context and inserted elsewhere during post-production, the second space in the exhibition comes to represent a space of potentiality. A group of five faceless portrait busts gaze outwards, nobly displaying the wigs used during filming. At once everywhere and nowhere, the viewer becomes implicated within the artist’s acknowledgment of an individual’s relationship and reflection of their shifting context”.

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And well, all that is appreciated but none of it, in terms of a gallery show and the actual art beyond the words, really engaged when it really really surely should have done and I guess I should stick to our policy of only (semi) reviewing or covering things when we feel positive about them but I kind of know others will be curiously interested, so here it is, we’ll politely leave it with you and head up the Hackney Road to the ever growing Moosey empire’s Hoxton Space where there’s a new exhibition from The Tvorogov Brothers…

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The Tvorogov Brothers – The Gift For The Flower at Moosey Hoxton – Never quite know what Moosey is all about, pretty much every show in their various London spaces has been in some kind of way a rewarding experience though. Two new names to is us this time, i am assuming they are two and not just one artist? 

“Aleksey and Anton Tvorogov (B.1988. Moscow, Russia). The Artist duo studied at School of contemporary art ‘Free workshops’ at Moscow Museum of Modern Art, they live and work in Moscow. The pair have exhibited nationally and internationally” and yes, the first thing that does come to mind is where are we with the showing and staging of Russian culture at the moment? Is the Ukraine invasion and the killing of innocent people on a daily basis such tired old news now that we’ve all but forgotten it?  Wasn’t the showing or Russian art an bit of a no this time last year? I don’t know where the Brothers stand, they hopefully fall on the right side of the argument, they probably can’t safely say? The Hackney Road galleries have been alive with international art in recent months, Russians, Mexicans, Canadians, New Yorkers, actually isn’t there a Russian artist at Sherbet Green at the moment as well? Big things like politics and war pushed aside for a moment, I do rather like this mostly grey rather black and white show and apparently “one day the sun descended upon a small town to make a gift to a flower…”. 

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Yes, It is all very slick, comic bookish, greyscale, kind of cold but at the same time kind of almost very nearly warm (in this not the warmest of rather brutalist gallery spaces) – “The works of Aleksey and Anton Tvorogov portray fragments of a fairy tale, using various mediums such as oil and acrylic paintings and sculptures. They use the languages of animation, comics, video games, book illustrations and puppet shows” – and yes, as the gallery statement points out, I guess you could say the first visual languages that people learn and use to shape their world view. I don’t know, is it just slick? Is it anything more? The Gift For The Flower? A flower? Is it a silent commentary? Positively plotless? Is being plotless a thing for them? Autonomous fragments rather than linear storytelling? A flower? A dirty great daisy? Are we invited to just wander freely or show we, the viewers, dive deeper? To go off and things? I don’t know? I kind of like these paintings, they are kind of slick, probably too slick and I do wonder why they’re here? Why I’m here? Here and now? I kind of like it, glad I made the effort, I didn’t really engage with any of it, no real emotion on my part, I don’t feel the need to shout that you need to go, that any of this really matters, it was all kind on “nice” in a kind of cold plotless way, is that what they wanted? (sw)   

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Soft Opening is found at 6 Minerva Street, London E2 9EH. The gallery is just off The Hackney Road, not far from Cambridge Heath overground station, the space is open Wednesday through to Saturday, midday until 6pm. The Sin Wai Kin show goes on until 16th December

Moosey Hoxton is at The Shoreditch Exchange, Hackney Road, London E2 8GY, The gallery is open Thursday through to Sunday, 11am until 5pm. The Tvorogov Brothers show runs until November 19th

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