INTERFACE

REVIEW

Michael Samuels Childstar

Rokeby, London
16 May - 20 June 2008

Reviewed by: Alex Pearl »

I am reading The Portrait of Dorian Gray at the moment. It was only £2 and printed by Penguin in a wonderfully retro style. It is probably designed for single men to read in cafés.

In the preface Wilde writes,
 “The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.  
All art is quite useless”.

Michael Samuels’ show Childstar is beautiful.  In a way I am frustrated, the sculptures are made from those colourful formica topped tables of a sort that I would like to have in my house. My gran had one, so there is a nostalgic pull to buy my own but I never see a suitable one when I am in the mood. This is probably because Samuels has a warehouse full of them somewhere. Using a restrained language of stacking, drilling, slicing, clamping and lighting he has produced a series of monuments to visual pleasure, each piece is carefully lit and often inlaid with the colourful surface of another table, I can see why he has been described as a painter.

Downstairs things are less monumental and even more playful. One pale yellow table is under-lit with blue LEDs and has a series of blue arrows running continuously along slots cut into its surface. I am slightly worried that I find this so attractive even though similar lighting under a GTI or on the front of a church would produce an entirely different reaction.

As I leave I think I’d love to own one.  They look like they might come as a hideously complicated flat-pack and I would want to stack bills on them or push my cds into the finely cut slots.


Rokeby has all the best shows.

Writer detail:

View my new blog in full at www.thepearlfisher.blogspot.com

or

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www.alexpearl.co.uk

Venue detail:
Rokeby
37 Store Street London WC1E 7QF

www.rokebygallery.com/ 

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