Mandy El-Sayegh: Jewel Tones This Summer’s Essential Contemporary Art Shows

By Mahoro Seward

In her show at Thaddaeus Ropac (located amid the spiffy fashion house flagships on Dover Street), Mandy El-Sayegh’s lustrous paintings and silkscreens grapple with the aesthetics and affect of luxury, drawing out the grim discord between the navel-gazing ostentation intrinsic to this space and the reality of a world in turmoil. Collaging real newspaper reports with first-degree luxury advertising, melding and obscured with lurid paint, the effect is an astute reflection on consumption in the age of collapse. Ultimately asking: will you still buy into it?