Stuart Middleton & Frans Masereel

June 22, 2017 

2-TIMES • Art
Stuart Middleton, ‘Beat’
&
Frans Masereel, ‘The City’
@ ICA, London
— 

‘I’m writing this
sitting at a plastic
table looking out
over the hedgerows,
with their grey
coating of road
grime and listening
to the ravens
cawing to each
other in brittle
bits of woodland.’ 

Two exhibitions: 
The first is the
institutional solo
of artist Stuart
Middleton,
presenting his 
new video ‘Beat’, 
in addition to
a site-specific
installation
developed in
response to the
architecture of
the Lower Gallery.
The second
exhibition, and
adjacent to
Middleton’s show
in the Upper
Gallery, is a
display dedicated
to Frans Masereel’s
woodcut works
‘The City’. 

‘Beat’
Situated in the
Upper Gallery is a
new stop-frame
animation showing an
undernourished dog
moving around in a
brightly lit cell that
recalls the white-
washed austerity of
vivisection laboratories,
euthanasia clinics
and art galleries. 

‘The City’ 
presents 100 evocative
monochromatic
illustrations that
provide a definitive
record of the banalities
of everyday life,
depicting the social
hierarchy, objectification
of women, bureaucracy,
rituals and practices
that defined urban life
in the early 1920s
and that are arguably
still evident today. 

On view at: 
ICA, London 
—
The Mall, St. James's,
London SW1Y 5AH,
United Kingdom. 

Closes: 
July 2, 2017.