paired, mirrored, flayed, javelin-impaled, cable-delineated-pendentive-funnel-
suspended, squid-like, priapic / labio-vulval, Janusian meta-portrait lozenges, in
turn pairing Matthew Barney, with eyes alternately open and closed, and the
artist, in two guises: screaming and 'defaced'-in-the-style-of-a-melting-Chinese-
Scholars'-Rock (with said disfigurement contained in a symmetrically-bordered
peel escutcheon),
with the composite figures richly embossed, in a manner reminiscent of late-
Renaissance Milanese parade armor, with a cornucopia of silhouetted motifs:
Abrahamic ecclesiastical symbols, animals, decorative flourishes, and
protuberant, warty, half-spheres,
one in subtly-figured, richly-colored Portuguese Gold Marble; the other in Italian
Portoro Marble, variegated black, electrically-laced with orange and white veins,
with differing surface treatments keyed to the corresponding swag-draped
corporeal flay strata: a glistening sheen for the splayed entrails, miniature
horizontal flutes for the mid-level viscera, and gnarled, ridged, sfumato-esque
soft-focus ornamental relief for the epidermis,
with eyes, oral features, and the mutilated face gleaming, respectively, with a
moist, lachrymal / salivary / mucosal polish,
with mannered, attenuated, crown-like cranium-top shatter-burst exit-wounds

2000 - 2009

Italian Portoro Marble, Portuguese Gold Marble, stainless steel, various other metals

stone / shaft assemblies: each 55 x 5-1/4 x 8 in (each 139.7 x 13.3 x 20.3 cm)
stone figures: each 22 x 5-1/4 x 8 in (each 55.9 x 13.3 x 20.3 cm)