Per Barclay

Per Barclay (b. 1955, Oslo) lives and works between Turin and Oslo. Barclay studied History of Art at Bergen University, and completed his training in Italy. His breakthrough came with the exhibition “Nuove trame dell’arte” (“New themes in Art”) curated by Achille Bonito Oliva in 1985. In 1990, he represented Norway at the Venice Biennial and was the selected artist for the Festival Exhibition at Bergen Kunsthall in 2001. His works have been exhibited in prestigious museums internationally, including Musée d’Art Moderne et d’Art Contemporain, Nice; Museet for Samtidskunst, Oslo; Palacio de Cristal, Reina Sofía, Madrid; Fondazione Merz, Torino; CAC Málaga, Málaga. Recent exhibitions include KODE, Bergen (2018); Cavallerizza Palazzo Mazzarino as part of Manifesta 12, Palermo (2018); OSL contemporary, Oslo (2022), and in the fall of 2023, Barclay held a solo exhibition at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in Norway. Per Barclay’s symbolic, metaphor-laden sculptures and photographs urges us to think in terms of stark polarities: black and white materials, as well as optical effects such as transparency and reflections in glass and liquids (including oil, milk, and blood), all used as devices to create visual contrast. In the many variations of Barclay’s photographed “oil rooms”, the floor surface in the various architectonic rooms from industrial halls to baroque churches are covered in oil, and the installation creates a physical and almost existential presence. The black oil’s shimmering surface dominates the room; the oil mirrors the architecture, the skylight, and the audience, while at the same time imposing a physical threat. He has continued to present these very themes in his latest body is work, produced in the iconic and neoclassical old Deichman building in Oslo. Oil is a dual and Janus-faced material. It has acted as a basis for globalisation, development and welfare in modern economy (especially given the history of Norway’s prosperity). At the same time, it has been responsible for causing war and suffering between nations and individuals, as well as being the leading contributor to environmental destruction and climate change. In Barclay’s interpretation, the oil becomes both beautiful and threatening simultaenously symbolic and poetic and that civilisation as we know it may be now be about to ‘receive its last oil’, in literal and perhaps even biblical terms.