With Phyllida Barlow, the Lokremise is featuring one of today’s most important sculptors. Only recently has the artist, born in 1944 in Newcastle upon Tyne, gained international recognition for the significance of her work. Yet in 2014 she presented a masterful large-scale installation in the monumental halls of the Tate Britain.
Phyllida Barlow
mix
August 21st - November 8th 2015, LOK
Phyllida Barlow’s installations result from an intensive dialogue with the space that they occupy. Like no other artist of her generation, she is capable of combining vastly different materials in a refreshing way into a coherent whole. The traces of the creative process remain visible, which lends her works a provisional and unfinished appearance. At the same time, she plays with the potential of changeability and cunningly questions the supposedly static nature of sculpture by creating what amount to anti-monuments, or sculptures “against sculpture with a capital S,” in her own words. And yet, despite their apparent fragility and provisional quality, her objects appeal to emotional aspects such as aggression, the feeling of being overwhelmed, or absurdity, and transform any exhibition space into a powerful experience that seems to physically envelop the visitor.
Curator: Konrad Bitterli
the artist
Phyllida Barlow
born 1944 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England
lives and works in London
Phyllida Barlow studied at Chelsea College of Art (1960 – 1963) and the Slade School of Art (1963 – 1966). In the late 1960s, she began teaching at the Slade School of Fine Art as Professor of Fine Art. She retired in 2009 from teaching in order to focus on her own work. Barlow became a Royal Academician in 2011 and lives and works in London.
