Page 5 - 50.La Biennale di Venezia issue of World of Art Magazine

Matthew Barney
Biography
CREMASTER 1,1995 (00:40:30)
Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco Written and Directed by Matthew Barney
in 1967 and was raised in Boise, Idaho. He Produced by Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Barney
attended college at Yale University in New Director of Photography: Peter Strietmann
Haven, Connecticut, receiving his BA in Starring Marti Domination
1989. Thereafter, he moved to New York
City, where he lives and works today. CREMASTER 1 is a candy-coated musical revue performed on the blue
Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho-Matthew Barney’s
hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships
From his earliest work, Barney has that often record and transmit live sporting events via television broadcast.
explored the transcendence of physical Four air hostesses, uniformed in trimly fitted 1930s outfits, tend to each
limitations in a multi-media art practice blimp. The only sound is soft ambient music, which suggests the hum of
that includes feature-length films, video the engines. In the middle of each cabin interior sits a white-clothed table,
installations, sculpture, photography, its top decorated with an abstract Art Deco centerpiece sculpted from
and drawing. His thesis exhibition at Vaseline and surrounded by clusters of grapes. In one blimp the grapes
are green; in the other they are purple. Under both of these otherwise
Yale, Field Dressing (1989), featured identical tables resides Goodyear (played by Marti Domination), a platinum
an installation of video and sculptural blonde Hollywood starlet. Inhabiting both blimps simultaneously, this
objects that combined the physicality of doubled creature sets the narrative in motion. After prying an opening
sports, the fetishistic nature of athletic in the tablecloth(s) above her head, she plucks grapes from their stems
equipment, and the endurance involved in and pulls them down into her cell. With these grapes, Goodyear produces
performance art. Between 1988 and 1993, diagrams that direct the choreographic patterns created by a troupe of
dancing girls on the field below. The camera switches back and forth
Barney developed the Drawing Restraint between Goodyear’s drawings and aerial views of the chorus girls moving
series for which he devised situations of into formation: their designs shift from parallel lines to the figure of a
self-imposed restriction, such as jumping barbell, from a large circle to an outline of splitting and multiplying cells,
on a trampoline, climbing over obstacles, and from a horizontally divided field emblem (Barney’s signature motif) to
or restraining himself with surgical latex a rendering of an undifferentiated reproductive system (which marks the
first six weeks of fetal development). Gliding in time to the musical score,
hosing, through which he would produce the chorus girls delineate the contours of a still-androgynous gonadal
artworks. In this series he explored the structure, which echoes the shapes of the two blimps overhead, and
feasibility of creating something under symbolizes a state of pure potential.
severe physical constraints, just as one Guggenheim
tears down muscle tissue in order to build
it up through weight lifting. CREMASTER 2, 1999 (1:19:00)
Written and Directed by Matthew Barney
Produced by Barbara Gladstone and Matthew Barney
In his first solo exhibitions, [facility of Director of Photography: Peter Strietmann
INCLINE] and [facility of DECLINE] (both Music composed by Jonathan Bepler
1991), held at Stuart Regen Gallery, Los AssociateProducer: Chelsea Romersa
Angeles, and at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, Production Design: Matthew D. Ryle
New York, respectively, Barney exhibited Starring Norman Mailer and Matthew Barney
elaborate sculptural installations, which CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into
included videos of himself interacting the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal
with various constructed objects development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney’s
and performing physical feats such abstraction of this process, the system resists partition and tries to remain
as climbing across the gallery ceiling in the state of equilibrium imagined in Cremaster 1. Cremaster 2 embodies
suspended from titanium ice screws in this regressive impulse through its looping narrative, moving from 1977,
the year of Gary Gilmore’s execution, to 1893, when Harry Houdini, who
performances entitled BLIND PERINEUM may have been Gilmore’s grandfather, performed at the World’s Columbian
and MILE HIGH Threshold: FLIGHT with Exposition. The film is structured around three interrelated themes-the
the ANAL SADISTIC WARRIOR. The related landscape as witness, the story of Gilmore (played by Barney), and the life
sculptures, including case BOLUS (1989- of bees-that metaphorically describe the potential of moving backward in
91), TRANSEXUALIS (1991), and REPRESSIA order to escape one’s destiny. Both Gilmore’s kinship to Houdini (played
(1991), are environments containing by Norman Mailer) and his correlation with the male bee are established
in the séance/conception scene in the beginning of the film, during which
such athletic items as wrestling mats, Houdini’s spirit is summoned and Gilmore’s father expires after fertilizing
a walk-in cooler, a cast petroleum jelly his wife. Gilmore’s sense of hisown doomed role as drone is expressed in
incline bench, and dumbbells of cast the ensuing sequence in a recording studio where Dave Lombardo, former
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