12/31/2023 0 Comments Matthew barney clockHanging above the field is a three-sided jumbotron, similar to that which one would see at a professional sporting event. Probably not.)Īmid the vast gray setting of steel, concrete, and support columns is a large, strikingly colorful field of artificial turf, in the center of which is the Field Emblem, an idée fixe from throughout Barney’s oeuvre that in the past he has specifically related to football. (Whether or not he would agree with that is another matter. Per his stated usage of the term, Secondary comes much closer to realizing a gesamtkunstwerk than his earlier pieces. That said, while Barney didn’t build the warehouse in which Secondary was filmed and presented, he is responsible for manipulating said container to meet his purposes. Barney has demurred in the past when repeatedly presented with the prospect of River of Fundament(and other works) being examples of gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), principally because Barney also associates that term with the artist building the “container” in which the work is presented-his primary example being Richard Wagner’s Bayreuther Festspielhaus, which was built to the composer’s specifications and exclusively stages his works to this day. While viewing the film, one sees an earlier version of the same site put to different use. Between producing the work and opening the space for public exhibition, the studio has been cleared of tools, materials, and associated ephemera, leaving an open expanse that more resembles an athletic facility than an atelier. Secondary was filmed in and around Barney’s warehouse studio, which also serves as the exhibition space. The athletes cast in Secondary are played by professional dancers and by Barney, and they range broadly in age, but with an emphasis on older bodies. These materials speak to qualities of strength, elasticity, fragility, and memory, and each, in its own way, embodies a character. The parallel narrative in Secondary is a material-based choreography where the substances Barney uses to make sculpture-lead, aluminum, terracotta, and plastic, all in various states of liquidity-are generated, formed, and manipulated by the performers in real time. It seeks to explore the complicated overlay of actual violence and its currency as image within the sport and the culture at large. Secondary’s underlying plotline examines these charged aspects of football-and, specifically, Barney’s memory of that play in 1978-through a movement vocabulary that focuses on each element of the game, from drills to pre-game rituals to the moments of impact. It was also a watershed case for the reform of rules protecting the bodies of athletes, which remains a polemic in football today, now gathering critical mass in the media. The impact, and Stingley’s resulting catastrophic injury, became mythic in scale through its relentless replay in sports media. The significant risk of the game became clear, and made a lasting impression on Barney as a young player, through an incident that took place in a professional football game on Augwhere Jack Tatum, a defensive back for the Oakland Raiders, delivered an open field hit on Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots. The extreme physical and psychological conditions of the game have been abstracted in Barney’s art practice since his earliest work, and now provide a context for this subject that is both retrospective and a new, direct engagement. Barney’s personal involvement in the sport served as a starting point for the development of this project. ![]() The first describes the complex overlay of violence and spectacle inherent in American football, and more broadly within American culture. Secondary maps two different narratives onto each other, using movement as the formal through-line. Also, notably, top creative billing is shared with movement director David Thomson, indicating the enhanced importance of dance and movement to Secondary compared to Barney’s earlier pieces.Ī synopsis, excerpted from the exhibition’s website, is as follows: Here Barney again collaborates with composer Jonathan Bepler. It’s also short (for Barney): one hour, though it does benefit from multiple viewings. Like its predecessor, Secondary features movement-based narrative in addition to materials- and aural-based elements. ![]() ![]() Secondary comes four years after Matthew Barney’s last large-scale exhibition, 2019’s Redoubt. Matthew Barney’s Secondary, a five-channel video installation, is now showing at his studio in Long Island City through June 25.
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