Prem Sahib: Room Review – Master of Unease Wraps the Town in Dread and Delight

De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill: A space of morbid unease runs throughout this strange, intense mid-career survey of the brilliant artist Prem Sahib, which twists the town in on itself and tears it apart. His exhibition at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a kind of mid-career survey for the 44-year-old English artist, is filled with private spaces and urban nightmares that have been destroyed and put on display. These minimal things, altogether

Prem Sahib turns the city inside out, twists it and breaks it apart. His show at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill, a sort of inter-professional survey for the 44-year-old English artist, is full of private spaces and urban nightmares that have been destroyed and put on display. This stuff is minimal, claustrophobic and intense.

A sodium street lamp hangs from the ceiling, casting its sickly pale orange glow across the gallery. You feel like you've stumbled upon an urban alley where physics is messed up, threatening to underpass, but surreal and upside down. Nearby, three puffer jackets are squeezed between sheets of glass - are these the guys who were waiting for you in the underpass? Or are they three strangers you're holding in your arms?

This is what Sahib does again and again: he plays with the line between horror and pleasure, threat and intimacy, public and private.

A lot of things here are geared towards an atmosphere of discomfort. A deep bass reverberates from a space, eventually reaching an ear-piercing screech, before settling back into an undertone. A table is made from an overgrown flea's body, the street sign is left empty but its light is still on. Two space heaters are constantly on and increase the temperature. It's borderline, weird, uncomfortable.

Strangeness plays an essential role in the owner's work. The double doors you walk through were taken from a Mile End leather strip where they closed in 2022, the resin-encased fountain from Chariots Sauna in Shoreditch, which closed in 2016. Private spaces, places of intimate pleasure, removed from the city.

In one of his signature resin panels, clear droplets accumulate on a sheet of black aluminum, like sweat on a nightclub wall. You can almost smell it, almost feel people huddled together, warm, wet, and writhing. Hang the phone up, two acrylic discs point to the visual results of rapid HIV tests. There is intimacy here, but there is also danger.

Danger and threat: A cracked obsidian mirror hangs on the wall, making discordant noises, a slow-motion recording of a homophobic slur sent to the owner in a gay chat room.

As the wall text here insists, is it all about architecture? i don't know Architecture is now about architecture - I don't need art to make me think deeply about buildings. This feeling is much more intimate than that cold description. It's about bodies pressing together, sweat dripping down the wall, and the feeling that everything is about to come apart from you.

All along, it's as if Sahib is asking: What happens when the places that matter to me, where I express myself, are destroyed? What is left for me, for us? Who decides which spaces can survive, who decides which communities are worth preserving, who decides where bodies exist?

I don't think everything works. A recording of Suella Braverman ranting hatefully about the migrant crisis you listen to while looking out over the sea is a bit of a stretch, and the tiny speckled images of the horizon that make up one wall don't really add much.

But for the most part, Sahib is brilliant, with an incredible knack for extreme minimalistic atmospheres. He's one of the most interesting artists to work in this country for over a decade, and a major corporate show like this seems long overdue.

Prem Sahib: Chamber is at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill from 10 October 2026 to 3 January 2027.