Abyss | Per Barclay at the Royal Palace of Caserta
Site-specific project in the Court Theatre of the Museum
Curated by Marina Guida
From May 21 to July 20, 2025, the Royal Palace of Caserta will host Abyss, a site-specific project by Per Barclay, curated by Marina Guida.
A powerful visual and symbolic exploration awaits the public in the Court Theatre of the Museum of the Ministry of Culture—an installation capable of subverting the site’s historical imagery and leading the viewer into a space suspended between allure and unease.
The exhibition, organized in collaboration with Galleria Giorgio Persano in Turin, was selected by the Museum’s Scientific Committee through the first semester 2025 call for participatory cultural enhancement at the Royal Palace of Caserta. This initiative is a tool for sharing, experimentation, creation, and innovation of cultural content. Research institutes, universities, training centers, cultural operators, cooperatives, foundations, volunteer and social promotion associations, associations’ networks, and other non-profit entities can propose activities aimed at promoting and enhancing cultural heritage—either physically or virtually—through artistic and creative expressions within the Palace, the Park, or the Carolino Aqueduct.
Barclay transforms the 18th-century Court Theatre of the Royal Palace into a reflective abyss, flooding the floor with a black fluid resembling oil. This smooth, mirror-like yet dark surface radically alters the perception of space, immersing visitors in a world of enigmatic reflections. The installation addresses profound and contemporary themes such as extraction and the oil industry, while evoking a philosophical dimension: oil becomes a metaphor for the subconscious, for mystery, and for inner darkness, reflecting the theatrical environment as a shadowy “double” of reality.
With Abyss, Per Barclay explores the ambivalent power of hydrocarbons—a raw material that has shaped humanity’s fate, generating wealth and destruction, progress and tragedy. Black gold, violently extracted from the Earth’s depths, has invaded every area of our lives, influencing the course of wars and irreversibly altering natural and social landscapes.
“The participatory cultural enhancement call,” states Tiziana Maffei, director of the Royal Palace of Caserta, “has opened new opportunities for collaboration and made ambitious projects a reality, enriching our museum’s cultural offerings. Per Barclay’s site-specific installation, with its hypnotic interplay of reflections and perspectives, will ignite new sensations within the rarefied atmosphere of the Court Theatre—a place of wonder and contemplation that, unfortunately, cannot yet host public performances. As we await the completion of works to fully restore the theatre’s functionality, Barclay will crystallize its beauty through a visionary lens, projecting it into the future through the artistic language of photography.”
The choice of venue is crucial. As curator Marina Guida writes: “The sumptuous architecture of the Palace’s Theatre, an emblem of power and prestige, is transfigured by the glossy black fluid. Decorative details and ornate grandeur are obscured and re-emerge from new angles, like a dreamlike, disorienting vision. Barclay invites critical reflection on appearance and ephemerality, transforming the space into a threshold between the real and the unreal. In this context, oil not only changes physical perception but also draws the viewer into an ambivalent experience where beauty and unease merge: now, the spectator becomes the one on stage.”
Visitors are thus invited to confront their own reflections. The black mirror does not merely return the viewer’s image—it suggests the existence of a hidden, mysterious, and disorienting world. In this surface, evoking the idea of an abyss, the artist seems to summon hidden truths and the allure of profound knowledge’s vertigo.
In the perfect, unsettling reflection of the liquid surface, the visitor sees and loses themselves, drawn into a sense of disorientation. The theatre—traditionally a space of performance—becomes the scene of a drama without protagonists, where the only actor is this absolute, pervasive substance that dominates all and denies any possibility of escape.
The site-specific project Abyss | Per Barclay at the Royal Palace of Caserta is supported by the moral patronage of the City of Caserta, the Campania Region, and the Norwegian Embassy.
Venue: Court Theatre of the Royal Palace of Caserta
Artist: Per Barclay
Curator: Marina Guida
In collaboration with: Galleria Giorgio Persano – Turin
Dates: May 21 – July 20, 2025
Opening hours: Monday – Friday 8.30am – 7.00pm (last admission 6.30pm)
Saturday and Sunday 10.00am – 1.00pm (last admission 12.30pm)
Closed on Tuesdays and free admission days
The exhibition is included in the standard admission ticket or museum pass.
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