Lucy McKenzie Reverses Power Dynamics

A replica of a shop front displays a series of mannequins dressed in sports attire, posed as if playing golf or in the middle of a game of tennis (Sports Shop, all works 2024). The canopied entrance to this faux store, nestled between the two window displays, looks like the perfect shelter for two lovers caught in a rainstorm. Here, in this seemingly innocuous space, everything might change and tension, sexual or otherwise, might bubble to the surface. Sports Shop – part of artist Lucy McKenzie’s ongoing collaboration with designer Beca Lipscombe, Atelier E.B – reminds me of how desire and yearning can become entwined with public architecture and how such spaces can be incorporated into the narratives of our own relationships. 

Also on view in ‘Super Palace’ – McKenzie’s first institutional solo show in Belgium – is Moving Panorama (TransSiberian), a vintage-style train carriage. Its deep red and cream exterior shines under the gallery lighting, like a car in a showroom. Much like the shop front, the carriage has been rendered on a scale that, while slightly smaller than life-size, is no less impactful. Through the curtained window of the carriage, a looped vista of the Trans-Siberian Railway can be glimpsed, inspired by the moving paintings of the same journey exhibited at the 1900 Paris Exposition, which was intended as an advertisement to the visiting bourgeoisie. The carriage is a vessel of escapism, another public space ideal for a snatched private moment, its secrets kept always in transit. Looking at McKenzie’s reconstructions of public spaces makes me think about how seemingly neutral locations – a train carriage, a sheltered doorway – become charged with personal stories, the mundane transformed into something exceptional through our individual, subjective experiences. 

In the upstairs gallery, McKenzie’s work turns to the domestic sphere, with two large murals dominating opposing walls. Mural for Cromwell Place (Francis Bacon’s Studio) comprises three panels, each presenting imagined scenes from the artist’s studio, which was said to host a secret gambling club to satisfy his roulette addiction. The mural shows a cross-section of activity: Bacon himself lurks at the edge of one panel, his body half-obscured behind an open door; in another, six guests are casually posed around a roulette table. Women weave their way through these vignettes with a knowing energy: one pulls back a cloth to peek at a painting from Bacon’s Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (1944), whilst another greets a guest coming in from the street, her gaze fixed outwards, looking straight at the viewer. These compelling women appear to be among the only characters moored in reality within this space of hedonistic risk. 

On the other wall, Mural Proposal for Jeffrey Epstein’s New York Townhouse (Filming of American Psycho) depicts a scene from the filming of American Psycho (2000), in which the actor Christian Bale stands naked in a shower while the members of an all-female film crew look on. The mural enacts a power switch: in the film, Bale’s character, Patrick Bateman, lures women back to his apartment to kill them; in McKenzie’s mural, Bale becomes the objectified figure – albeit willingly. This work presents a playful reversal of long-standing gendered power dynamics and, as in Mural for Cromwell Place, questions the narrative dominance so frequently offered to men. 

The works in ‘Super Palace’ trouble the cultural hierarchy: images and items from mass and popular culture permeate the installations and murals on display. McKenzie – as always – gives just enough, guiding us in perfect balance along a knife-edge between lust and sex, drama and restraint. 

Lucy McKenzie’s ‘Super Palace’ is on view at Z33, Hasselt, until 23 February 2025

^{Main image: Lucy McKenzie, Mural Proposal for Jeffrey Epstein's New York Townhouse (Filming of American Psycho) (detail), 2024, oil and acrylic paint on canvas, 5.1 × 3 m. Courtesy: the artist, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne/New York and Cabinet, London; photograph: Useful Art Services}