Barry X Ball
Barry X Ball / Matthew Barney Dual-Portrait Installation.
a flayed, javelin-impaled, cable-delineated-pendentive-funnel-suspended, squid-like,
priapic / labio-vulval, Janusian meta-portrait lozenge of the artist, screaming, and
Matthew Barney, stoically becalmed, richly embossed, in a manner reminiscent of late-Renaissance Milanese parade armor,with a cornucopia of silhouetted motifs: Abrahamic ecclesiastical symbols, animals, decorative flourishes, and protuberant, warty, half-spheres, in variegated, exuberantly-colored, fractal-patterned, striped, spotted, semi-translucent, onyx from Baja California, with differing surface treatments keyed to the corresponding swag-draped corporeal flay strata: a glistening mucosal sheen for the splayed entrails, miniscule horizontal
flutes for the mid-level viscera, and gnarled, ridged, sfumato-esque soft-focus
ornamental relief for the epidermis, with eyes and oral features gleaming, respectively, with a moist, lachrymal / salivary polish, with a mannered, attenuated, crown-like cranium-top shatter-burst exit-wound
Mexican onyx, stainless steel, 24K gold, various other metals
stone / shaft assembly: 55 x 5-1/4 x 8 inches
(139.7 x 13.3 x 20.3 centimeters)
stone figure: 22 x 5-1/4 x 8 inches
(55.9 x 13.3 x 20.3 centimeters)
