The installations of the Scottish artist Claire Barclay (b. 1968) respond both in terms of precision and atmosphere to the space of the particular exhibition venue. Her arrangements that comprise a multitude of various materials and forms in unusual combinations are poised between the poles of function and decoration, hard and soft, heavy and light, open and closed, minimal and monumental, natural and artificial, or craft and industrial production. Although abstract in their formal language, Barclay’s installations, objects, drawings and prints take on a narrative character because they link up with what is known and familiar to us, albeit without explicit expression. Intuitively comprehensible because of the wide field of reference that her works lay open, at the same time they also retain an aura of the mysterious. They play with ideas of usability by suggesting the idea of a particular function yet remain elusive through their immediate displacement.

For the ground floor of Kunstverein’s Haus Salve Hospes, Barclay will create works that in their sequencing, references and aesthetic characteristics are seen as a unified composition and develop their dramaturgy and rhythm from room to room. The objects and installations take on the features of the given space, expand them or stand in contrast to them. For example, hallways and sight axes are obstructed, spatial proportions emphasized, symmetries mirrored and décor incorporated. In her approach the artist achieves a connection between the surrounding architeture with its historical dimension and the artistic work without fusing both to a homogenous unit. Instead the eye is directed to the particularities of both elements, which heighten the overall effect. And yet the exhibition in Braunschweig is only a momentary snapshot in a creative process which is constantly being developed, a short stop during which the results of her former work are recorded, varied and elaborated on. As she herself has described it: “I see the installation very much as a pause in an ongoing process”.

Barclay’s display on the ground floor contrasts in an interesting manner with the exhibition of Tobias Buche’s work on the second floor, which with its partitions is basically independent of the given space in the Kunstverein. With her interest in the various qualities of form and material as well as art history, design and ornament, Barclay belongs to a current generation of artists that prevails in the art discourse of the moment (Carol Bove, Wade Guyton, Simon Dybbroe MØller, Katja Strunz, Cathy Wilkes, etc.). Nevertheless with her approach, which evolves purposefully in response to the particular exhibition rooms, she maintains a high degree of autonomy.

Claire Barclay’s work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Tate Britain in London, the Moderna Museet in Stockholm and in numerous international group exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennale and at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. Her solo presentation in the Kunstverein Braunschweig is her first appearance in Germany, however.