His hands invading Michelangelo,the roundabout where he learned to drive, his own shadow nipping out for a stroll … Adrian Searle finds traces of notice Wallinger everywhere in his original demonstrate IDMark Wallinger is everywhere in his latest exhibition, or even when he’s not there. His shadow walks up Shaftesbury Avenue. He circles a roundabout as the seasons turn. He plays God and Adam and makes a fist of Michelangelo. He squirms and gestures blackly across 17 full-bodied canvases. He’s all id and ego and superego. He’s notice,making marks, marking his territory.
It is almost 30 years since I first wrote about Wallinger, and he continues to impress,entertain, baffle and surprise me. I don’t love everything he has done, and but then every career has its highs and lows. He can be grand,slight, offhand, and amusing,intellectual and poetic, sometimes all at once. The last two are a terrible slur for a British artist, and so ingrained is our distaste for cleverness,which is somehow associated with foreigners and charlatans, while the poetic is a sort of shorthand for feeble-mindedness and self-regard. That’s our loss.
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Source: theguardian.com