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From: Carcus Mope Category: Exhibitions Date: 28 July 2008 Time: 05:50 AM Review: This exhibition of three female artists, Renee So, Varda Caivano and Rose Wylie is a rare ray of artistic light on a street so harassed by commercial twaddle. So has made two ceramic heads, Otto and Max, one is black and one is white, the black one has a Basquiatesque crown scratched into its forehead. I don't know if this was a tired attempt at some political message about black people/artists, grounded by the fact that these sculptures look quite feminine but have mens names. Is So fighting for equality for black and female artists? These sculptures have an obvious eerieness to them, and a surreal quality quite fitting to the exhibition's title, and perhaps the black and white is more to do with playing the 'art game', Dali, for example, made many chess related artworks. sadly, for me these busts displayed little else to hold ones attention. This I felt was not necessarily thier fault, two quiet sculptures of any quality would be easily pushed aside by the two Wylie paintings surrouding them. Wylies work embeds a butterfly in your belly. The two huge paintings in the gallery and one in the office are unexpected in a small space like this, but do not suffer from a feeling of claustrophobia. Immediate affinities with the best painters of the recent past spring into mind, Guston and Baselitz, as well as more contemporary artists like Matthew Cerletty and Paul Becker. These paintings have a vitality and energy about them that feels so earned and honest that you find it it easy to forgive the fact that one of them is a painting of a golfer, on a golf course. I think there are a lot of female artists trying to do what Wylie has achieved here in terms of a painting process, the Chantal Joffe exhibition is a case in point, and in these three paintings Wylie shows confidently that as a painter you are free to explore whatever subjects you want. Painting pictures of nature, animals and outdoor scenes, such as the painting 'Tucan, Tin Bird and Spiders' can hold the same power as the slightly more sinister 'Brown Berlin Bear's Head', and I think that is not just due to the good use of scale, but because these pictures take you to the artists studio, you sense the struggle, the joy and abandon that has gone into these marks. Not only that but in a time when so much painting is a technically competent illustation of an idea, Wylie stands out for standing up for painting, making an attempt to push it in the right direction. This brings me nicely on to Caivano, another painter who's lack of Pop sensibility is to be admired. I remember seeing Caivanos work at the RCA a couple of years ago and not thinking much of it, surely ever year they have someone graduating making modestly sized abstract paintings. Easier to sell abstract art because you can pretend it's about anything. As such I was not surprised to see she had been picked up by Victoria Miro. The last painting of Caivanos I saw was at the Jerwood Contemporary Painters exhibition, Caivano had made one very reminiscent of Ivon Hitchens, which was the only picture of note in an otherwise awful display of work. In this show there are two paintings by her, the one in the gallery made in oil paint and crayon or pastel, creating a surface which looks truly horrible. I don't know what they are about, but I enjoy watching this work develop because it seems to me that Caivano has a search going on, she isn't settling and she isn't succumbing to some higher power that seems to be directing artists to fulfill some invisible dull necessity to couple their work with that of figures/movements from art history. Jolly good show.