Stuart Shave Modern Art

Modern Art! How much do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Epicentre of Hackney’s buzzing Vyner street during first Thursdays and host of the beautifully terrifying show entitled Invocation of my demon brother, by my favourite gay occultist, Kenneth Anger; you’ve now wowed me with their latest project entitled Sphinxx, a group show collating paintings, photography and sculpture from artists such as Richard Aldrich, Matthias Bitzer, Jean-​Luc Blanc, Shannon Bool, Marc Quinn, Charles Ricketts, Félicien Rops, Eva Rothschild and Ken.again.
This time they’ve ditched the white cube look for this show and kitted the space out in dark blue paint, which imparts the works hanging currently with almost mythical, nocturnal feel. You’ll see vibrant land and cityscapes as well as abstract representations of Egyptian pyramids (which may go some way in explaining the name of the show).When I was there some pesky visitors had nabbed all the press releases, so I was unable to grasp the intentions of the curator in selecting these pieces, which is a shame.
Nevertheless I’ve spent many an early evening at Modern Art, helping myself to that impossibly large bucket of free beer and being jostled by fellow MA fans trying to get a piece of the action. It strikes me as relatively traditional in its approach as a commercial gallery no performance artists thrashing around doing something strange, very rarely does video installations but you’ll find a really impressive and varied body of fine art works here.