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Matthew Barney
REPRESSIA (decline)1991

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Artist or Maker: Matthew Barney
United States, California, San Francisco, active New York, New York, born 1967
Title: REPRESSIA (decline)
Date Made: 1991
Medium: Wrestling mat, Pyrex, cast petroleum jelly and wax curl bar, socks, sternal retractors, large pearl tapioca petroleum jelly, self-lubricating plastic flight blocks, and videos
Dimensions: 192 × 216 × 177 in. (487.68 × 548.64 × 449.58 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Jeffrey Deitch and Manfred Simchowitz
Accession Number: M.2019.343.1-.21
Classification: Installation Art
Collecting Area: Contemporary Art
Curatorial Notes: Matthew Barney approaches sculpture and film with an interest in framing devices, whether through elaborate narratives or eccentric uses of materials. REPRESSIA (decline) is a seminal installation from his breakout solo exhibition at Barbara Gladstone Gallery in New York in 1991. Its sculptural material is unorthodox: a pink, fleshy wrestling mat with two protruding appendages, a clinical speculum, petroleum jelly, tapioca, and tube socks. Barney, who was an athlete before studying art at Yale, transforms athletic tools of the trade and medical apparatuses into highly charged relics.

The sculpture dialogues with two related video performances that are contained within the installation: Radial Drill and Blind Perineum (both 1991). In each piece, Barney is seen performing a series of strenuous physical acts. Prior to the pageantry of the Cremaster series, which invoked everything from Busby Berkeley musicals to Richard Serra’s Hand Catching Lead, Barney’s early pieces centered on spaces, objects, and recordings of performances, exploring, to paraphrase him, “the athlete [a]s an alchemist/the athlete [a]s an artist.” Barney has returned to the theatrics and violence of sports in his latest installation, Secondary, which showcases the artist alongside football players engaged in an elaborate choreography.

Rita Gonzalez

2024

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