SECONDARY is a five-channel video installation by Matthew Barney, performed in the artist’s Long Island City studio in 2023, then in London, Paris, and Los Angeles in 2024. The plot revolves around an accident that occurred during a football game in 1978, when Oakland Raiders’ Jack Tatum delivered an open field hit on Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots. Stingley was left paralysed. The tragic event remained seared in the minds of American fans, including Barney himself, a youth-league quarterback at the time.

Through allusion to American sports culture, SECONDARY explores the complex intersection of violence, its representation, and its celebration. It reimagines the game through a unique movement vocabulary. The result is a physical study that focuses on every element of the game, from drills and pre-game rituals to moments of impact and their slow-motion replays.

Volume 1 explores SECONDARY in depth, with essays by leading contemporary voices. Volume 2 maps the life of Barney’s former Long Island City studio, where SECONDARY premiered to the public.

Contributions by Eric Banks, Jonathan Bepler, Raven Chacon, Mark Godfrey, Juliette Lecorne,  Helen Marten,  Maggie Nelson, and David Thomson
Author: Matthew Barney
Edited by Louise Neri

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Urs Fischer’s site-specific ceiling painting Good Luck Peanuts, 2024, is on permanent view at Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, in Venice.  Fischer’s installation was created for the ceiling of the movie theatre using various painting techniques, ranging from acrylic to enamel on sand, and from fresco to lime plaster. Playing on the visual illusion offered by the perception of plasticity, the textured brushstrokes on the frame, and the deep perspective of a clear-sky, Fischer’s work offers – with characteristic humour – a contemporary trompe l’oeil.  

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We congratulate Matthew Barney on becoming an Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Matthew Barney has been elected into the Department of Arts and will be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters during its annual Ceremonial in May 2024.

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Urs Fischer’s monumental work L’Arc from 2016 has been installed at the forefront of STATION F, the world’s largest startup campus based in Paris. Made of 202 elements in aluminum alloy with sand casting, this huge arch reinforces the bridge between art and entrepreneurship. Standing 11 meters high, L’Arc is the largest private sculpture on the public space, at the heart of STATION F.

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Urs Fischer’s sculpture 8 from 2014 has been installed in the new Chipperfield Building at the Kunsthaus Zürich. The official inauguration of the new extension is scheduled to take place on 9 October 2021.

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