Per Barclay: Soft Sweet Vortex

Encompassing photography, sculpture and installation - this career spanning survey of Norwegian artist Per Barclay contextualises his place within the Arte Povera movement.

This publication is published on the occasion of the exhibition 'Per Barclay: Soft Sweet Vortex' at Henie Onstad Kuntsenter. The career survey combines forty artworks made from 1979 up to this year, including a new photographic series of Barclay’s ‘oil room’ at the former Deichman Library in Oslo, produced in 2022. The exhibition considers photography, sculpture and collage to create a total installation, speaking to the magnetic and extensive character of the artist’s international practice, which has spanned four decades.

'Soft Sweet Vortex' seeks to highlight Barclay's interest in the contrast between air and liquid, which creates tension and a deep sense of the uncanny in his work. Barclay's use of solid materials, such as steel and oil, and choice of extravagant sites and repetitive formal exercises, reflect on industry and capital in their mutual dependency and entwined logic.