Nicole Eisenman review: ICE-like goons clash with sublime stargazing as America’s magical magpie returns

Sadie Coles HQ, London Abstract, humorous yet deeply unsettling, the painter’s dazzling exhibition sees her caught between distant skies and the ugly reality on the ground Nicole Eisenman’s 2023 exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery took its title from Hillary Clinton’s account of the 2016 US presidential election: “What happened.” With its absurdist riffs on contemporary American life, the show confirmed that Eisenman is among the most important artists of her time and that “what happened” was a disaster.

So her return to London might be thought of as a sequel, with the working title: “So what do we do now?” Eisenman is justly celebrated for her rambunctious, magpie and irreverent subversions of the conventional histories of art and society.

A painter who has lately (and successfully) turned to sculpture, her work often places people in situations – ranging from crowded bars to town squares flooded with mud – that match broad humour to sharp technique in reflecting on how our identities are shaped by the company we keep.

And yet my first thought on entering Sadie Coles’ gallery was the artist had turned her back on the world.

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