San Francisco–born, New York–based artist Matthew Barney regards the body as a vessel of perseverance and transcendence. This installment of the New Work series—Barney’s first solo museum exhibition—presents a universe in which professional athletic prowess confronts the roots of sexuality and parallels sexual behavior. Barney exposes ambiguities in our prevailing assumptions about gender and physical strength through his performance-based media works, and he raises similar issues in his sculptural renderings of weightlifting equipment, which are cast or coated in tactile materials such as petroleum jelly, wax, and sucrose.
No brochure was produced for this exhibition. A catalogue was published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1991. View or download an excerpt from the catalogue.
Learn more about the New Work series.