British artist P. Staff has unveiled what critics are calling the year's most frightening and emotionally powerful exhibition at David Zwirner's New York gallery. The show, titled "Possessive," transforms the gallery's Upper East Side townhouse into an unsettling, corporeal experience that explores the horror of inhabiting a human body.
The exhibition's centerpiece is a new 20-minute video work called "Penetration" (2025), which depicts a motionless person with a laser beam directed at their bare stomach. The video is strategically installed across all three floors of the gallery, making it impossible for viewers to see the subject's complete body at once. On the middle level, visitors encounter only a towering view of a tattooed abdomen, creating a fragmented, disorienting experience.
While "Penetration" doesn't feature traditional body horror elements like blood or gore, it proves deeply unsettling through its massive scale, which draws direct comparisons between the gallery space and the human form. When the video subject breathes, the gallery walls themselves seem to respire, creating an immersive sensation of being inside a living organism. This effect is enhanced by the work's gargantuan proportions, which make viewers acutely aware of their own physical presence.
Staff has deliberately transformed the typically sterile gallery environment into something profoundly corporeal. The windows are covered with a jaundiced yellow film reminiscent of urine and bile, while the sounds of a beating heart emanate from speakers on the ground floor. These elements combine to create the sensation that visitors are moving through the interior of a living, breathing entity.
The exhibition's unsettling nature is amplified by its anatomical confusion. The heart sounds don't originate from the gallery's center, and the video's ground floor portion doesn't show the subject's lower body. This deliberate misalignment creates a dysphoric experience that Staff has described as embodying "trans poetics," though their work typically avoids explicit political statements.
Surrounding the video installation are sculptures from Staff's "Distrain" series, featuring wooden spikes beneath latex drapes. These works evoke various interpretations: partially packed furniture, humans encased in bondage gear, or alien beings emerging from soft shells. While the title "Distrain" refers to the legal seizure of property or money, the connection between this concept and the sculptures remains intentionally ambiguous.
This marks Staff's first solo exhibition with David Zwirner and, surprisingly, their first show with any New York gallery, despite significant attention from their contribution to the 2024 Whitney Biennial. That installation, which first appeared at Kunsthalle Basel in 2023, featured an electrified net suspended above viewers, suggesting both a nervous system and a form of danger.
The timing of "Possessive" adds political resonance to Staff's exploration of bodily experience. With increasing government attempts to police trans bodies in the United States, the image of a green laser beam examining or surveilling the video subject takes on additional meaning. The subject's apparent indifference to this scrutiny – at one point lighting a cigarette despite the laser – suggests a form of resistance or dissociation.
Staff, who is based in both London and Los Angeles, has previously addressed physiological violence sanctioned by government through their work, including pieces that reference voluntary sterilization laws in the United States. This broader context suggests that "Possessive" engages with contemporary political realities, even as it maintains artistic ambiguity.
Despite its horror elements, the exhibition maintains a striking beauty through its use of color and light. "Penetration" periodically bathes the space in deep blue, bold red, and bright white, creating lush visual moments that suggest transcendence alongside fear. This aesthetic choice implies that confronting bodily horror can lead to deeper understanding of human identity and composition.
The exhibition represents the kind of ambitious artistic risk-taking that has become increasingly rare in New York's contemporary art scene. By turning a prestigious gallery space into something resembling a haunted house – albeit one without supernatural elements – Staff challenges visitors to confront the fundamental anxiety of physical existence. "Possessive" runs through October 25, closing just six days before Halloween, making it a particularly timely exploration of what truly frightens us about being human.
