Nicole Eisenman’s art is a lesson in what can be achieved if you are adventurous, alert and unafraid. The confidence and daring of her paintings and sculpture keep tripping you up as you move through this wonderfully queer sprawl of an exhibition. With walls of framed drawings, with drawings made directly on to the gallery wall, with a hilariously mordant video booming out sardonic snatches of art world conversation, with parades of paintings and galumphing sculptural tableaux, Eisenman keeps you fascinated, obsessed with what she’ll get up to next.
Spilling over with jokes, social observation and satire, touching vignettes and piles of writhing bodies, nothing is too silly, too bawdy, too trashy, too raunchy or too difficult to attempt. Orgiastic scenes of female empowerment and male castration? Check. Giving birth while being hanged? Why ever not. The painter’s ennui and scenes of loving intimacy? Natch.
