exhibition description from the BoCA website:
THE MATTHEW BARNEY SHOW is an outgrowth of CremasterFanatic.com, a web-based project Eric Doeringer launched in 2004. CremasterFanatic.com appears to be a "fan site" dedicated to Matthew Barney but is actually a conceptual artwork exploring the idea of fandom and the intersection between the art world and popular culture. Doeringer chose Barney as a subject over other "art stars" because Barney's photogenic features and romance with Icelandic pop singer Bjork have propelled his celebrity beyond the confines of the art world. Timed to coincide with Barney's Drawing Restraint exhibition at SFMOMA, THE MATTHEW BARNEY SHOW seeks to both exploit and augment the hype that accompanies any new Matthew Barney project.

This is one of the most amusing art shows I have seen in years, making the recent "Smart Ass" show at Southern Exposure appear dour by comparison. Many of the works in the exhibition are visual one-liners, such as the Matthew Barney astrological chart, the Matthew Barney wall calendar with menstrual cycle days marked in pink, parodies of Barney's self-lubricating framed drawings that feature styrofoam framed pictures of ice cream cones and Mr. Potato Head parts, and a beribboned styrofoam container decorated with peanuts and bubble wrap, and photos of mock ups of vaselined grapes, in dioramas with toy cars, or a toy cow wrapped in prosciutto.

Some of the visual one-liners are quite crass: such as a cartoon of Matthew Barney being anally penetrated by Richard Serra, buttons with testicles that say "Cremaster" or "Matthew 'Big Balls' Barney," or the ink-jet prints of Matthew Barney "separated at birth" from various celebrities, juxtaposing the image of Barney with the rag hanging out of his mouth and that of Morgan Spurlock, mouth stuffed with McDonald's french fries from the "Super Size Me" promo shot. The only thing missing, it seemed, was a pair of Cremaster-themed bumper balls (also known as Truck Nutz). Truly, the works with humor value dominate the exhibition.

Other works deftly emulate the forms and aesthetics of fan art: from the snapshots of a pumpkin carved to resemble Matthew Barney in his Cremaster 3 pink headdress and other people dressed up as Matthew Barney characters, to the poorly executed paintings and drawings of the artist, to the video entitled "Kremaster," that opens to the song "Iron Man," by Black Sabbath. The Cremaster Fanatic website also includes erotic fan fiction of the variety, known as Slash, which generally entails homoerotic encounters between male characters that aren't sexually linked in the source narrative (e.g. Star Trek's Kirk and Spock, Lord of the Rings' Frodo and Sam).

The Matthew Barney Show's premise is clear and straightforward, as are most of the works in the exhibition, in contrast to Matthew Barney's complicated obscurantism, which makes the artist such a prime target for such treatment. I came away from the exhibition noting that jokes about Matthew Barney are funnier (and easier to make) than those at the expense of other contemporary art stars. Besides his high profile, expensively-produced works and his celebrity marriage, the nature of his works lend themselves to the sort of fan culture found most often in the realm of science fiction and fantasy. The artist's near-requirement of supplemental texts to fully understanding his work, and that he has indeed, produced such texts, are quite in line with the sci-fi/fantasy modus operandi (e.g. J.R.R. Tolkien and Neil Gaiman).

The other serious angle with which to view the show is the marketing of Matthew Barney vs. other pop cultural products. The exhibition addresses this by interspersing amongst the "fan art," marketing materials and ephemera from Matthew Barney exhibitions: brochures, posters, cards advertising cell phone tours, and commemorative buttons for Drawing Restraint 9 (though none of them depict testicles). One video, entitled "Cremassticparkinator 3," intercuts "The Order" sequence from "Cremaster 3," which is available on DVD at the SF MoMA store, with other sequel-ized action movies, Jurassic Park and Terminator. Intricately edited with cuts matching actions and movements along vectors, here we see Matthew Barney's film as another big budget action movie, yet one that fewer people will see.

This is not a novel idea -- it has, after all been 8 years since "The Art of the Motorcycle" crashed through the already rickety barrier between high art and the mass culture marketplace, 90 years since Duchamp fired the opening shot, and continually assailed in the past 50 years by the likes of Rauschenberg, Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Jeff Koons, and countless other artists and critics exposing the similarities between the two systems. I'm consistently fascinated by the marketing of Matthew Barney for the reason that his work is difficult. Yet it is promoted with similar glamour shots, festive banners, and web ads featuring a countdown with seconds ticking until the end of the SF MoMA's Drawing Restraint exhibition -- much like, a motorcycle. While the fine art museums and high art galleries have long since ceased trying to maintain an impregnable barricade between themselves and mass culture, Matthew Barney is presented as a potent weapon to ensure the barbarians at the gate enter in an orderly fashion and venerate the white walls, much in the way Herzog's Fitzcarraldo effected the South American cannibals with his opera records.

According to CremasterFanatic.com The Matthew Barney Show has been extended and "should be up through September 23, or so." Information about upcoming shows at BoCA can be found at http://www.sfboca.com/