Art stars get Poe-faced

In a corner of the crumbling basement of Shoreditch Town Hall lies a modest gold wristwatch, spotlit, from which emanates a spookily amplified ticking, a work by American sound artist Christian Marclay.

In another dank room is a pristine white coffin that is sinisterly diamond-shaped, a work by the German "fairytale minimalist" Katharina Fritsch.

Such are two of the 40 works in the atmospheric, superbly titled, occasionally brilliant group show curated by British writer Harland Miller on the theme of Edgar Allan Poe. Half of the exhibition is in White Cube’s Hoxton Square gallery, the rest in the nether regions of nearby Shoreditch Town Hall.

In works that have mostly been specifically produced for the exhibition, an impressive cross-section of the big names in contemporary art — Mike Nelson, the Chapman brothers, Gregor Schneider, Douglas Gordon, Barnaby Furnas, the list goes on and on — have pushed that button marked "Victorian Gothic creepiness" to great effect.

It is more than just a group show, it’s a team effort — the cleverly hung works build a unified "set" under their own momentum, as in the juxtaposition of Cerith Wyn Evans’s glowing red Murano chandelier and Marcus Harvey’s painting of a fireplace, which blends abstract expressionism, baroque wallpaper and architectural engraving.

On the minus side, there is something grating about the sense that the artists and curator seem to expect to be congratulated on being fans of Edgar Allan Poe (Hello? Isn’t everybody?); and there are a handful of shamelessly obvious ideas — a skull that glows in the dark, a bed spattered with paint (Hirst) and a door with a knob on the wrong side (Douglas Gordon).

But even the turkeys fit in — one only has to imagine that they are themselves the products of one of Poe’s cranky characters, or accept the convergence of art gallery and theme park.

Meanwhile, there are also some works of genius. One of them is Anselm Kiefer’s installation in which coils of lead remarkably printed with photographs of his concrete towers surround two lead beds like old rolls of film in the lair of a mythical projectionist.

Until 10 May. Information: 020 7930 5373, www.whitecube.com

You Dig The Tunnel, I'll Hide The Soil
White Cube
Hoxton Square, N1 6PB