Art

‘Coloured Threads in Door Knobs’ is a perplexing bunch of paintings and one sculpture by London-based, Serbian born Milena Dragicevic. The show’s title is said to relate to an Eastern European superstition or old wives’ tale, but exactly how we’re not told.The closest I can get to it is the practice of leaving a trail of string behind you, as Theseus did in the Minotaur’s maze or Hansel and Gretel did with their breadcrumbs, and I certainly had to pick my way gingerly around the show with only tiny scraps of evidence to connect the dots between these works.

Her ‘Supplicants’ are spoiled or defaced portraits of friends, their blue lips, polka dot smiles or sausage noses describing some grotesque comic torture done by the painter to these acquiescent yes-men and -women lackeys, who supplicate themselves to the artist’s evil bidding. The double portraits of heads and binary hoodies with concealed faces would look baffling in this company were it not for the knowledge that she’s a twin.

Then there are the paintings of sculptures – sinuous, twisting bronzes on bright backgrounds called ‘Aalliraujaq’ after the Inuit word for table – which are similarly plucked out of the void for our dubious delectation. Dragicevic realises that mutation is the only way forward for figurative painters, and we all know that, for artists, depicting the world is not enough. She successfully confuses real and imaginary registers but in doing so confuses the viewer, with the further result that her pictures can look unresolved, as if she too were unsure of her disjointed juxtapositions. It’s fine to enjoy the space you’re in but you’ve got to be able to find your way out eventually.