“My work deals in daily tensions, in those anxieties that we experience due to the discrepancies and contrasts between beauty and comfort, between the “great possibilities” of our time and the extreme precariousness of our contemporary situation.” Per Barclay.
Invited by Jean-Noël Flammarion, Per Barclay created in March 2010 a Chambre d’Huile on the ground floor of 17-19, Rue Visconti in Paris, before the restoration works would modify the whole function of the space. Thus, the black oil on the foot of the bookshelves has been engraved in the memory of this space once devoted to books on art and bibliophilia. The ground floor had been a bookstore for over twenty years and in the past also a printing house for Balzac in 1926 and an atelier for Delacroix, among others.
Per Barclay worked as a photographer in Florence and studied Fine Arts in Bologna and Rome. He is first and foremost a sculptor, and later went on to work on ephemeral installation devices called Chambres d’Huile, which were created to be photographed. In his Chambres d’Huile, Per Barclay covers the floor with liquids: from black oil (often waste oil), to wine, blood or water, the artist then creates a reflective space that modifies and alters the installations and the spaces, rendering them inaccessible and unattainable.
rueVisconti
17-19 rue Visconti
75006 Paris
Publisher: Maison d’éditions et de Production d’art, Per Barclay, Photographer, previously unpublished text by Arnaud Maillet, (French-English)
Format 21 × 25 cm, 85 pages, 30 color pictures
45 €
