Reviews: Inés Fernández-Shaw at Duran; Anne-Renée Hotte at Centre Clark; Jessica Houston at Art Mûr; Klaus Scherübel at Fondation Molinari
* For a change, I have given the poor souls who write exhibition statements a break and not engaged with them. Inés Fernández-Shaw , Objects in the Mirror May Are Closer Than They Appear at Duran Contemporain The gallery walls are dotted with a baker’s dozen of paintings. The imagery mostly involves faceless nude female bodies, the different elements of the anatomy recombined in biologically impossible ways, or arranged in cropped clumps. When not heaped in a barely defined landscape, the bodies are placed in architectural or mirror-like frames. The flesh is rendered with a cosmetic finish and contrasted with the flat rendering of moon faces and birds. There is a playful eroticism to the work, but there is also a forced aspect that either highlights or subtracts from it, depending on the painting. That is her treatment of various other figurative elements, whether birds or the moon. Cast in a different style than the flesh, the contrast, I assume, should be jarring and give it a...