Phyllida Barlow: In Zabalaga

Barlow's final works in dialogue with Eduardo Chillida's house and museum

This publication documents the exhibition of the work of acclaimed British sculptor Phyllida Barlow (1944-2023) at the Chillida Leku Museum in Spain. Many of the works were created specifically for this space and in dialogue with those of Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida in the 17th-century Zabalaga farmhouse on the museum grounds. As El Pais reports, "While Chillida's sculptures represent all that is solid and stable, Barlow's work[s]-many of which are imposing structures-[are] marked by fragility and uncertainty. The large tower standing in the village center looks like an unstable skeleton, while other seemingly solid pieces are supported by hollow pedestals. The artworks culminate in their own indeterminacy, unabashedly displaying the scars of their creation." Barlow's works continually expand the limits of the sculptural medium, leading us on a journey that turns space into a theatrical stage on which the spectator and the objects are the protagonists.