Abstract
The formal characteristics of Matthew Barney’s artworks dismantle mythologies from the inside out. Barney’s current exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art titled Matthew Barney: REPRESSIA (decline) features a sculptural installation from the 1990s, including a two-channel video installation. This article illustrates how the mechanisms of Barney’s methods hollow out systems of signification from within, before remythologizing them. Barney subverts traditional sculptural practices in a number of ways. The present study asserts that the effect of Barney’s sculptural aesthetic produces an emptying of the objects’ signification, followed by what could be termed a “re-signification.” Barney’s sculptural objects become signifiers that resist signification: they flirt with being non-messages. There exists in Barney’s sculptural objects a provocatively fluid tension hovering between message and non-message; indeed, I contend that the object in the Barney installation functions as a sign that at once both signifies and impedes its own signification. Barney dismantles notions of the traditional art object. In Barney’s Cremaster series, this formal mechanism morphs powerfully into French philosopher Roland Barthes’s “answer of the fifth type”. Barney spawns a tertium quid, representing a powerful re-signification of form. Barney murders the art object, actively severing imagery and objects from their inherited denotations and connotations. Unpacking objects in this manner entails an undermining of the unconscious process of the naturalization of signs.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Type | Review: Matthew Barney’s 'REPRESSIA (decline)' |
| Media of output | Art Magazine |
| Publisher | White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art |
| Place of Publication | New York |
| Publication status | Published - 5 Dec 2023 |
Access to Document
- Full-text PDF (accepted manuscript)
This is the accepted author manuscript (AAM) of the article which has been made Open Access under the University of Bristol's Scholarly Works Policy. The final published version (Version of Record) can be found on the publisher's website. The copyright of any third-party content, such as images, remains with the copyright holder.