Ceal Floyer, Solo (detail), 2006, microphone stand, microphone holder, hairbrush, 54 3/8 × 25 1/4 × 25 1/4".
Two decades ago, while her YBA predecessors were garnering international attention for blaring, acerbic one-liners, Ceal Floyer emerged in Britain as a beacon of restraint, creating such quotidian epigrams as Light, 1994, a dangling, unplugged bulb lit by four surrounding slide projectors. Floyer’s minimal gestures require sustained consideration, making her practice perfectly suited for a showing such as this—a spare but rewarding survey of thirteen pieces made between 1993 and 2015. Take in the early work Door, 1995, in which a slide projector has been configured to mysteriously illuminate a strip of light beneath a closed door, or Solo, 2006, a mic stand supporting a would-be star’s hairbrush. Or pause to digest the artist’s latest iteration of Bars, 2015, for which she has fitted the museum’s street-level picture window with bespoke black steel bars. Floyer’s closed-circuit construction outs itself, plangently, as a brittle, carefully maintained surface, half covering and half concealing. Existential anxiety? We don’t talk about that.
