Barry X Ball — Matthew Barney / BXB Dual — Dual Portrait — Nathalie Obadia Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: March 17 → May 16, 2012

After the critical success of his exhibition at Ca’Rezzonico in Venice last summer, the artist will be showing a composition of great technical virtuosity: a Janus-like double portrait of himself with fellow artist Matthew Barney.

In the spirit of his most emblematic pieces, Barry X Ball is thus continuing his work on a contemporary reinterpretation of Baroque sculpture, taking as his models art world personalities in an effort to offer a total sensorial experience. Matthew Barney / BXB Dual-Dual Portrait is in fact a synthesis combining a meditation on art and its history and on its positioning in public and architectural space, under a specific mode of lighting that creates an ambience intrinsically linked to the piece on display.

The American sculptor has pulled off a real tour de force, managing to transcend the masterpieces of European classicism that inspired him and thus to challenge the perception of the contemporary public by putting forward a new sensorial approach to the work of art. The semi-precious finish of this installation made using digital images bestows a remarkable, immaterial aura on its unsettling conversation between the artist and Matthew Barney. The spectator oscillates between the tension of the sublime and the possibility of the grotesque.

While remaining true to his formal approach, with Matthew Barney/BXB Dual-Dual Portrait, Barry X Ball pushes back the limits of his practice by creating a striking sculpted piece in two tones. There is an extreme tension between the intimacy of the conversation and the repulsion and terror inspired by the javelin tearing the flesh of the truncated busts: between the bulk of the marble and the precise refinement of the delicately chiselled flesh of the two men, inspired by Italian Mannerist ceremonial armour.