Prem Sahib: Chamber review – master of unease twists the city into terror and pleasure
De La Warr Pavilion, BexhillThere’s an atmosphere of sickly discomfort throughout this weird, intense mid-career survey for this brilliant artistPrem Sahib turns the city inside out, twists it around and...
By Eddy Frankel · The Guardian Culture
De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill There’s an atmosphere of sickly discomfort throughout this weird, intense mid-career survey for this brilliant artist Prem Sahib turns the city inside out, twists it around and rips it apart. His show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a sort of mid-career survey for the 44-year-old English artist, is full of private spaces and urban nightmares that have been gutted and left on display. It’s minimal, claustrophobic, intense stuff. A sodium street lamp hangs upside down from the ceiling, casting its sickly pale orange glow across the gallery. You feel like you’ve stumbled into some urban back alley where physics has been flipped, it has all the threat of an underpass, but surreal and inverted. Nearby, three puffer jackets have been squeezed between sheets of glass – are these the blokes who were waiting for you in the underpass? Or are they three strangers who you’ve caught mid-embrace? Continue reading...