Blog Post 2: Barney Exhibition Review

My overall impression on Matthew Barney’s Exhibition: Facility of DECLINE is strongly negative.  This is mainly due to my certain picky taste when it comes to art.  Also, as I kept moving through the gallery and observed Barney’s other pieces I have come to assume that this artist is, for lack of a better term, crazy.  This may be harsh of me to presume, or, that is the intended effect.  I mean the installation’s name does include the word DECLINE.  Maybe the aforementioned decline is the loss of sanity.  A majority of the floor art seemed to lack any rhyme or reason to me and sadly looked like a hodgepodge of different objects just strewn together.  Continuing through the gallery I was taken aback by the wall art especially; which were light drawings of a uterus and penis.  And how a large floor installation was in the shape of a uterus.  I don’t have a problem with these things, I was just merely shocked.  Something I did have a problem with though was in the last section of the exhibit where one of the televisions played a video of a man who was nude and had metal bars wrapped against him in odd places.  That video really just ruined the entire exhibit for me.  However, I must say that I was interested in the materials used that included: “petroleum jelly, prosthetic plastic, tapioca, and cast sucrose” (description from front desk of exhibition).  I have never seen artists use these specific items but I thought it was fascinating to say the least.  Be that as it may, these materials are not enough to sway my opinion.