Matthew Barney's latest performance, TACTICAL Parallax, at the Aspen Art Museum's AIR festival, has been a fascinating blend of military history and alchemical storytelling. This year’s installation, ZONE DEFENSE: Old Snowmass Parallax, carries forward elements from his previous works, creating an intricate dialogue between narratives.

The structure itself mirrors last year's performance with its PVC piping but is now made of stainless steel painted to look like it's alive. The 'weights' are bronze casts painted to mimic gym equipment and the top 'jerseys' memorialize football players from Barney’s Secondary. The piece interacts with the landscape, drawing parallels between military drills and Western land.

The white piping, used in both Secondary and TACTICAL Parallax, has a magical quality that emerges when the performer steps away. It stands or falls like a sculptural enigma, embodying the absence of the body while functioning as a static performance.

The sculpture’s placement within the landscape is crucial; it brings the tension and confrontation of Western land into play, much like in Redoubt. The orange markers, reminiscent of football fields, act as boundaries that demarcate this new space. They form part of a larger, more visible parallax structure when connected, creating a scale that extends beyond the immediate performance.