Pablo Bronstein’s Walker

In a ruched ivory mini dress, white stilettos and a statement necklace of big glossy pearls, the woman in Pablo Bronstein’s latest video, Walker, is the embodiment of 1980s chic-turned-cheap. Everything about this elegant blonde says new money making a bid for class: a wet dream of Thatcher’s Britain. Yet as she struts back and forth like a stripper on the stage, she seems out of place, lost and lonely against a black backdrop. There’s more to the way she moves, extending an arm like the graceful neck of a swan or wrapping her arms around her torso. It seems as much like ballet as Vogueing. Mixing a showgirl routine with classical forms of dance, this is a performance of sex and power that stretches back centuries.

A child of 1980s Britain, Bronstein first came to attention with antiquated looking drawings tackling architecture and control, in particular the Po-Mo mash-up of styles that characterises the landscape of London’s business district. In recent years though he’s increasingly turned his attentions to how life is performed in the City squares overshadowed by skyscrapers: the everyday stage that subtly directs how we think and move. Unearthing lost worlds of courtiers and Kings, he’s focused on performances infused with Sprezzatura – the art of moving gracefully, birthed through the cliquey sophistications of the 16th century Italian court.

Whether camping it up or selling sex, refined body language has come a long way from its elitist origins. Sprezzatura has been absorbed into the poses adopted in aristocratic portrait painting, influenced ballet’s development and increasingly defined the difference between the sexes and sexuality, speaking as much of erotic availability or resistance to the norm. Bronstein’s foxy lady is the bastard child of this convoluted history: a walker whose movement is anything but pedestrian.

Pablo Bronstein’s Walker features in his current solo exhibition, Jail, at Herald Street gallery, London until 31 October.