Phillippe Vandenberg's Urgent Testimony reviewed by Hyperallergic

The work in the exhibition, ‘Philippe Vandenberg,’ at Hauser & Wirth (June 27 – July 28, 2017), curated by Anthony Huberman, is from the last three years of his life. It includes paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, and words written large on sheets of paper. The paintings are done on surfaces as disparate as canvas and found objects.

Although the exhibition is spread out over three floors of this tony townhouse between Fifth and Madison, it feels crowded, largely due to the installation on the first floor, where 111 pages from a sketchbook dated 2008 (the year before he died) are placed end to end on five narrow tables of different lengths in two adjacent rooms. The space between the tables is so narrow that I felt as if I were waiting to go through the X-ray machine at the airport.