PER BARCLAY: SOFT SWEET VORTEX HC – ANA MARIA BRESCIANI-PER BARCLAY

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.