ART-PRESENTATION: Matthew Barney Redoubt
Matthew Barney is an artist whose practice encompasses sculpture, performance, filmmaking, libretti, photography, drawing, rappelling, and nothing less than the creation of myth. The hybridity of his art was evident as far back as 1989 when, during his senior year at Yale, he made a mesmerizingly prescient video called “Field Dressing”, which established a vocabulary that informs his work to this day.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Hayward Gallery Archive
“Redoubt” is Matthew Barney’s most recent body of work and represents a major new direction for the artist, addressing themes as vast and varied as cosmology, ecology and the role of artistic creation. The exhibition is centred around the homonymus feature-length film and includes a series of imposing and intricate sculptures cast from burned trees and over 40 engravings and electroplated copper plates. The sculptures and engravings refer to, and expand on, the filmic scenario, which explores questions of access rights and trusteeship of common lands through the story of a wolf hunt. For the sculptures Barney has combined traditional casting methods and new digital technologies with unprecedented techniques to create artworks of formal and material complexity as well as narrative density. The monumental sculptures in the exhibition derive from trees harvested from a burned forest in the Sawtooth Mountains. Molten copper and brass were poured through the trees, creating a unique cast of the core as the metal flowed inside. Each sculture is a literal vestige of Idaho, with the remains of the tree being subsumed into the artwork. The exhibition also includes engravings on copper plate that Barney made during the filming of “Redoubt” as well as a series of electroplated copper reliefs that feature imagery from the film, such as the landscape of the Sawtooth Mountains or a wolf among the trees. The electroplates were made using a technique that Barney developed during production of the film, which he then refined and expanded in the studio. In this experimental method, an image was engraved into a copper plate coated with asphalt. The plate was immersed in an acid and copper solution and was subjected to an electrical current, causing copper growths to form out of the engraved lines. By altering the conditions in the electroplating tank, the artist produced unique variations on each image. On the plates that were left longest in the electroplating bath, the copper accretions overtake the drawing, transforming the engravings into abstract reliefs and almost completely obscuring the image.
The feature-length film, “Redoubt” traces the story of a wolf hunt that takes place over six days and nights in the frigid wilderness of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. The film is an interpretation of the myth of Diana, the goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter who encounters her while she is bathing in the woods and is punished by being transformed into a stag and hunted down. Diana, played by real-life sharpshooter Anette Wachter, is dressed in a kind of military camouflage associated with anti-government survivalist groups, and is accompanied in her pursuit of the wolves by two dancers who move in concert. Barney appears in the film as the Engraver, a ranger for the US Forest Service. He observes the hunter and makes a series of copper engravings that he brings to a remote trailer where the Electroplater subjects them to an electrochemical transformation. In a nearby town, the Engraver encounters the Hoop Dancer, whose intricate choreography is the catalyst for the wolf hunt’s dramatic conclusion. In the absence of dialogue, dance is a prominent language in the film, and the characters’ movements often seem to anticipate and rehearse the events that follow. Enhancing the ambient sounds generated from the snowy landscape and the Electroplater’s fizzing chemicals, the multi-layered musical score by Jonathan Bepler gives the film an otherworldly dimension. Throughout the film, the camera shifts back and forth between the third person and the perspective of different characters, exploring the dynamics of seeing and being seen as much as the myth of Diana and Actaeon. All hunting scenes in Redoubt were staged using special effects. Trained animals were provided by professional handlers, who monitored their safety and the conditions on set. Wild animals were filmed in their natural habitats.
Film Credits: Written and directed by Matthew Barney, Produced by Matthew Barney, Sadie Coles, and Barbara Gladstone, Director of Photography: Peter Strietmann, Music composed by Jonathan Bepler, Editor: Katharine McQuerrey, Producer: Mike Bellon, Production Design: Kanoa Baysa, Art Direction: Jade Archuleta-Gans, Diana: Anette Wachter, Calling Virgin: Eleanor Bauer, Tracking Virgin: Laura Stokes, Electroplater: K.J. Holmes, Engraver: Matthew Barney, Hoop Dancer: Sandra Lamouche, Choreographer: Eleanor Bauer, Additional choreography by Laura Stokes, K.J. Holmes and Sandra Lamouche.
Photo: Matthew Barney, Cosmic Hunt: MultiCam Virgin, 2019, One electroplated copper plate with vinegar patina and seven engravings, on asphaltum ground in copper and charred pine frames, © Matthew Barney, Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ-London
Info: Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre, Belvedere Road, London, Duration: 19/5-25/7/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Sat 11:00-19:00, Sun 10:00-18:00, (Film screening Hours: Wed-Sat 11:05, 13:20 & 15:40, Sun 10:05, 12:20, 14:40) www.southbankcentre.co.uk
