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Oslo (Norway), 1955

Although Per Barclay lived in Italy for some 15 years, and despite the fact that he has been living in Paris since 1995, he continues to be attached to Norway, the country he represented at the Venice Biennial in 1990.

His origins are particularly evident in his unique perception of nature, transmitted through the idea of dwelling rather than that of direct appreciation. The enclosure becomes a receptacle for landscape, in full osmosis with it, but inverting all the principles of interior-exterior. It rained on the inside of small houses Per Barclay made out of glass and metal, where water was extended over the tables in the installation at the Palacio de Cristal in Madrid, contained in glass cubes and in Interiors or in other Water Houses. If it is not water that is running, it is a breath of air that is perceived, either through sound or the action of air inflating flexible materials. At times, air and water are associated by way of water mattresses. The elements appear as the main protagonists of these sculptures and installations in situ, and they are always expressed in evolving works that convey how nature stalks simply-built structures lacking the technical apparatus man has equipped himself with to defend himself in its midst.

The other aspect of Barclay's works concerns the opposite, the record of the image of all the interventions where water or other liquids, air or other elements, indicate the absence of man. Numerous installations can be perceived only fleetingly or from an unlikely point of view, whereby the artist skilfully chooses to register them through the suitable medium of photography. The connection between real space and photographic space leads the artist to put the spectator's lucidity to the test in order to verify the distinction between the two. The majority of the photos of these installations depict the rooms of water and especially the rooms of oil. In 1989, in the toilets of an abandoned factory in Breda, Holland, the artist lined the surface of the floor with motor oil. This was to be his first oil room, Lokaal 01. In the beginning, these rooms existed only to be photographed, the photo drawing attention to a nonexistent space, although the space in itself had no pretext other than to exist.

Therefore, the installations can be seen or not, but a new dimension is made manifest by a disturbing, reoccurring element. Whether it is a naked halogen lamp, a shrill sound or a balloon blown up with a motor pump, which prevents us from entering a room, that "something" causes us to succumb to the reality of our body that cannot bear it. The most recent series of photographs of dancers captured in uncomfortable postures somehow seems to be a continuation of that experiment the spectator had already experienced in her/his body. L. A.