American football, the last frontier by Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney is a contemporary American artist who works using a variety of creative languages: sculpture, cinema, photography and drawing. His art explores the connections between geography, biology, geology and mythology and touches on the interconnections with other important aspects of human life such as sex and conflict. In this exhibition, hosted at the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris, Barney presents his latest video installation entitled SECONDARY. The plot of the video revolves around the memory of an incident that occurred during an American football game in 1978, when a defender during a phase of the game violently hit an opposing wide receiver who was paralyzed as a result of the collision. A metaphor of American society and the glorification of the cult of violence, this work by Barney is also an indictment of the media industry and how brutality is an integral part of the narrative of everyday life overseas.