Staged on 27 and 31 July 2026 in Aspen, Colorado, ZONE DEFENSE: Old Snowmass Parallax marks Matthew Barney’s latest large-scale exploration of the relationship between the body, endurance, mythology and material transformation.

Presented as part of Aspen Art Museum’s AIR 2026 programme, the site-specific sculpture continues the artist’s investigation begun with TACTICAL parallax in 2025, extending his long-standing fascination with ritual and the symbolic landscapes of American culture.

Installed across a vast field at Rose Ranch, framed by the Rocky Mountains and near the location of last year’s performance at McCabe Ranch’s 10th Mountain Division Field House, ZONE DEFENSE transforms the landscape into a diagram of movement and confrontation. The sculpture sits at the centre of four diagonal axes marked by athletic end zone lines, creating a spatial composition that recalls the fields of play explored in TACTICAL parallax and Barney’s 2023 film SECONDARY.

At the heart of the work, two abstract figures cast in stainless steel and aluminium appear suspended at the moment of impact. Their bodies are locked in a frozen collision, held in tension by a complex system of counterweights. The work references the historic 1978 American football collision between Jack Tatum and Darryl Stingley, an incident that left Stingley paralysed and raised enduring questions about violence and the culture surrounding the sport. Embedded within the sculpture are two entangled football jerseys: Tatum’s black and silver Oakland Raiders uniform and Stingley’s red, white and blue New England Patriots jersey.

Appearing almost as a drawing suspended in space, ZONE DEFENSE traces the choreography performed by David Thomson and Raphael Xavier in the roles of Stingley and Tatum during TACTICAL parallax.

Recognised as one of the most influential artists of his generation, Matthew Barney has spent more than three decades exploring the relationship between the human body, ritual and transformation through sculpture, installation, film, performance and drawing. Since the early 1990s, his ambitious projects have examined the spectacle of violence within American culture, combining references to classical mytholog and popular imagery.

His recent major works, including SECONDARY (2023) and Redoubt (2018), continue this exploration of physicality, landscape and national mythology. Barney has presented major solo exhibitions at institutions including Fondation Cartier in Paris and Yale University Art Gallery, and is the recipient of numerous honours, including the 1996 Hugo Boss Prize.