Modernist architects were inspired by the “utilitarian dream” of building “machines for living”, said Skye Sherwin in The Guardian. But their buildings would become the stuff of nightmares. By the 1970s, tower blocks and modernist housing schemes had become bleak symbols of “social breakdown”, used as settings for dystopian novels and horror films. In many other countries, meanwhile, modernism became a favoured style of authoritarian regimes.
There’s “much to recommend” this exhibition, said Will Wiles in Apollo. Highlights include Mies 421 (2010), a video by Maria Taniguchi that leads viewers around the dark and desolate spaces of Mies van der Rohe’s landmark 1929 Barcelona Pavilion. Birmingham artist Richard Hughes contributes a giant sculpture resembling “a Calder-esque mobile”, decorated with “lumps of broken concrete” and “a deflated space hopper”; it projects “an uneasy air of both pleasure and neglect”.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Equally interesting is Sudanese-born artist Ola Hassanain’s video work examining British and Soviet modernist influences on post-independence Khartoum. Closer to home, Ismael Monticelli fields an “absorbing” sculpture “decked with arcane symbols”, in which Birmingham’s notorious Spaghetti Junction interchange leads directly into Brasília, Brazil’s “showpiece modernist capital”.
Yet while the show is “often stimulating”, its “cumulative effect never convinces”. Its scope of reference is “too broad” and its arguments never really add up. Above all, it is curiously lacking in “atmosphere” – a prerequisite for an exhibition about horror.
Nevertheless, this is a “thought-provoking” show, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Roaming the world, it explores the dark underbelly of 20th century hopes and dreams: Shezad Dawood’s “eerie” tapestry depicts an abandoned modernist US embassy in Karachi, while a sculpture by Poland’s Monika Sosnowska resembles a “smashed-up fairground ride” – a “stark, frightening symbol of urban desolation”.
Abbas Zahedi provides a small but “distressingly powerful” piece – a “charred” and “inverted” exit sign that refers to the Grenfell Tower catastrophe. Horror in the Modernist Block may lack “cheap thrills”, but this is an engaging exhibition full of “insidiously unsettling” moments.
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (0121-248 0708, ikon-gallery.org). Until 1 May. Free entry
-
Why the Bangladesh election is one to watchThe Explainer Opposition party has claimed the void left by Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League but Islamist party could yet have a say
-
The world’s most romantic hotelsThe Week Recommends Treetop hideaways, secluded villas and a woodland cabin – perfect settings for Valentine’s Day
-
Democrats push for ICE accountabilityFeature U.S. citizens shot and violently detained by immigration agents testify at Capitol Hill hearing
-
6 gorgeous homes in warm climesFeature Featuring a Spanish Revival in Tucson and Richard Neutra-designed modernist home in Los Angeles
-
Touring the vineyards of southern BoliviaThe Week Recommends Strongly reminiscent of Andalusia, these vineyards cut deep into the country’s southwest
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
