Blood of Two

Overview

This installation includes a video that documents a collaborative performance by Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton at DESTE Foundation Project Space on the island of Hydra, Greece, in 2009, as well as elements that were first exhibited there: drawings that the two artists created together, sculptures by Barney and paintings by Peyton.

The performance began with a procession at dawn to a nearby cove. Local fishermen pulled a large bronze and glass vitrine out of the water, where it had been anchored by divers to the sea floor, and carried it up a narrow stairway to the road. At the top of the steps, a dead dogfish shark was placed on the vitrine. The fishermen – accompanied by a large audience, as well as numerous goats and sheep – then conveyed the vitrine to the exhibition space, formerly the island’s slaughterhouse.

The vitrine was placed inside, its lid was removed, and the water it contained gushed through a blood drain back into the sea. Within the vitrine were five collaborative drawings by Barney and Peyton and a bronze book with an aquamarine patina, developed during immersion underwater.

Additional works play on the theme of food and flesh, both human and animal, such as Barney’s sculptures of an abstracted cat figure in bronze and a re-creation of the blood drain.


2013

This project was part of Sharjah Biennial 11