Gili Tal's 'The Cascades Plus' at Cabinet Gallery Critiques Urban Aesthetics Through Abstraction

Gili Tal's exhibition 'The Cascades Plus' at Cabinet gallery in London transforms urban elements into abstract artworks that question contemporary city planning aesthetics. The show features 'Buses (Diffuse Glow)' (2024), a painting resembling a London bus through a chequerboard of pinks, greys, reds, and browns. Nine inkjet prints from the 2020 series 'Windows (Rainscreen Wash)' display blue shades with rainlike dashes, each bearing the Shutterstock watermark as commentary on stock imagery. Three granite bollards and scattered paper cutouts depicting smartphone screens, apartment blocks, and sweet wrappers create an environment of urban detritus. Tal previously explored similar themes in 'Civic Virtues' at Cabinet in 2018 and 'Mastering the Nikon D750' at Zürich's ETH Hönggerberg in 2019, consistently examining artwork valuation. Oliver Corino's introduction compares the prints to aluminum cladding used to mask unattractive buildings, highlighting Tal's focus on architectural gentrification and mass-producible design. The exhibition's ephemeral quality—through litter-like prints, unmovable slabs, and watermarked images—evokes urban desertion, subtly addressing the absence of people in these architectural critiques. Running through January 25, 2025, the show abstracts London's environment to reveal somber implications about privatization and superficial urban development.