Away Gown

One of Matthew Barney's two childhood idols is Jim Otto, a former Oakland Raiders center from 1960 to 1975. Throughout most of Otto's career, the football player played with a plastic right knee. In Away Gown, 1991, the athelete's signature double zero jersey hangs on a prosthetic plastic wall mount with titanium ice screws. Focusing on pure physicality and athleticism as well as the entertainment culture of sports, Away Gown relates to Barney's video DELAY OF GAME which was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1991. Through out the exhibition Barney used the double zero as a motif, and in typical Barney fashion, sculpture, performance and video art were simultaneously mixed, reconfiguring the gallery spaces into a cross between a gymnasium and high art institution.