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LACMA Will Show Matthew Barney's "REPRESSIA (decline)"

Matthey Barney, REPRESSIA (decline), 1991. LACMA. Photo by David Regen

Just added to LACMA's schedule is a showing of Matthew Barney's REPRESSIA (decline), a 1991 video installation with wrestling mats, petroleum jelly, tapioca, and socks. The work has recently been acquired by LACMA and will be on view in the Resnick Pavilion July 23, 2023–Jan. 7, 2024.

SFMOMA owns another version of REPRESSIA. MOCA displayed Barney's RIVER OF FUNDAMENT in 2015.

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Anonymous said…
Barney's work is a manifestation of the ideas that were rampant at Yale from 1985 to 1989 --- the last vestiges of deconstruction, a yearning for something truly different in Bataille and surrealism, and conceptualism (in contemporary art).

Against that backdrop, his work loses some of its originality and ability to shock. The things Bataille did with regimented bodies remains more shocking.

Truth be told, we all wanted to think and write like Bataille back then. That was before it was known or had sunk in that Bataille was otherwise by profession a librarian at the Bibliotheque Nationale whose own preoccupations had originated in the Middle Ages. We thought at the time that we were on the cusp of something new.

--- J. Garcin
July 13, 2023 at 3:24 PM
Anonymous said…
As the LA Times noted a few months ago, LACMA is becoming just another run-of-the-mill museum of contemporary art. I notice most of their current special exhibits continue that same pattern which dates back several years.

At least the new building is going to have a lot more square footage for large au-courant, nouveau artworks like the Barney piece. Yah! Actually, such works presumably will be only in either the Broad or Resnick galleries. But all the floor-to-ceiling windows in the Geffen building will make for ideal backgrounds for contemporary art. Sort of like areas found in big glass-box houses around Bel-Air or Beverly/Hollywood Hills.
July 20, 2023 at 12:42 AM
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