Playfully pointless work

Having taken pictures of his internal organs, German artist Tobias Rehberger has incorporated them into a swirly design for 1970s-style wallpaper. The resulting images, in livid pinks and purples, are not as gory as you'd imagine. But you may well be left wondering if it actually makes for art.

While the wallpaper decorates the foyer of the gallery, the gallery itself has been colonised by a huge yellow pod. If you crouch down underneath it, you'll find a ladder leading you inside a dark space with blackpainted walls.

Here, in the centre, is a hanging lamp in which a bulb refracts through cut sheets of clear and coloured plastic, a futurist, Naum Gabo-type structure.

Apparently the lamp is synchronised with the light in the bedroom of the artist's 15-year-old namesake, Tobias Rehberger, a Berliner who has been told to keep it switched on during exhibition hours.

Into the light again and you'll find a cluster of prosthetic limbs leaning against one wall, while, through doors at the back of the gallery, you can enter another room where there are brightly coloured plastic mouldings of the window frames of the artist's studio.

The mood, no doubt, is meant to be playful and slightly anarchic, demonstrating, as if we needed to be reminded in this case, the demotic nature of art. But playful can easily become seriously tedious and, since none of these components seems to add up to very much, it all seems, well, rather hopelessly pointless.

Until Nov 14, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Whitechapel High Street, E1, Tue to Sun 11am to 6pm (Thu to 9pm), free. Tel: 020 7522 7878. Tube: Aldgate East