“At Residence, All over the place and Nowhere” is an bold solo exhibition of large-scale sculpture, set up, and wall-based work by Simeon Barclay, collaboratively proven throughout each galleries. Every gallery will function work from the identical wall-based acrylic sequence, drawing an specific continuity between the overlapping exhibitions. Set in opposition to a hanging black background, cropped and edited movie stills from Hedi Slimane’s Celine Autumn/Winter 23 style marketing campaign depict fashions projecting a simple nonchalance behind sun shades, a sight that each absorbed and repelled the artist as a result of their layer of impenetrability. To additional discover this rigidity, Barclay has intervened into the floor with vinyl and painted canvas, creating vibrant summary blocks akin to the work of Matisse as a gesture in the direction of deconstruction, fandom and appropriation.

At Gathering, Barclay is presenting a larger-than-life inflatable sculpture of the artist sporting a Donald Duck outfit, referencing a 1980 Elton John efficiency in New York Metropolis. Evolving from a earlier sculpture exhibited at South London Gallery, which featured the identical pop cultural quotation, the newly created work takes on an amazing presence inside the gallery, adopting an identical pompous scale akin to the 1995 Michael Jackson HIStory album statue, witnessed by Barclay floating down the River Thames, a stance that’s concurrently threatening and theatrical. Persevering with to play with tensions between tautness and tenderness, further works inside the multifaceted set up work together with the structure of the gallery’s decrease ground. The primary of three sculptural installations, a sequence of javelins pierce the area, an object that’s each sleek and accommodates a possible for violence. Taken by the artist and activist Ajamu X, a lightbox which depicts a nude portrait of the artist, holding a restful and unguarded pose reminiscent of classical statues, whereas a watchful cardboard cut-out of a police officer connected to a robotic vacuum initiatives a pathetic sense of surveillance and failed deterrence.

At Office, a metallic railing skirts across the darkened basement, the place a sequence of neon textual content works held inside semi-transparent bins illuminate the area. Guests, stored at a slight take away by the barrier, can wander by the haunting environment of the surroundings. A movie set up initiatives handheld footage into the gallery to fill the area with emergency strobe lights, evoking an elusive sense of hazard at evening, while upstairs a fabricated weightlifting rack is adorned with unusual and acquainted sculptural parts, invoking the notion of energy as a defence mechanism. Right here, Barclay’s references to public structure, establishments of management and instruments for particular person optimisation gestures in the direction of the privatisation of city area, the place entry to public areas is contingent upon non-public forces and reduces the company of passers-by, usually made not directly seen because of the presence of sentinels and bodily obstacles. The silence of the movie together with the anomaly of the weightlifting rack additional underscores this sense of what’s said and unspoken, what’s seen and unseen.

Throughout each exhibitions, made doable by a distinctly collegial partnership between the 2 galleries, Barclay attracts upon a wealthy vein of pop cultural sources, producing works that manifest by a posh interaction of the sonic, collage, an archival strategy to the appropriated picture, sculpture, video, objects and the re-interpretation of the gallery area by set up. Deeply evocative and steeped within the politics of public area, inside these twin exhibitions the artist brings guests on a journey throughout the development of masculinity and experiences of residing in a up to date metropolis. Collectively, the artworks additional Barclay’s idiosyncratic engagement with artwork historical past and style, identification and histories of picture making.

at Gathering and Office Gallery, London
till November 11, 2023