ART-PRESENTATION: Matthew Barney-Redoubt

One of the most important figures in contemporary art, Matthew Barney became known to a wide public through his cycle of five films, “Cremaster”, in which he appears to metamorphose into different animal and human forms within a striking, dreamlike, baroque world. His vast, monumental work questions issues of gender, cyborgs and mutant humanity.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Yale University Art Gallery Archive

Matthew Barney’s in his solo exhibition “Redoubt” presents his latest body of work of the period 2016-19, which includes the eponymous two-hour film “Redoubt” , that traces the story of a wolf hunt in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountain range, intertwining the theme of the hunt with those of mythology and artistic creation. Also featured are four monumental sculptures, more than forty engravings and electroplated copper plates, and an artist-conceived catalogue. This is Barney’s first solo museum exhibition in the U.S. since the presentation of “River of Fundament” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in 2015–16. The new artworks continue the artist’s shift in materials over the past decade, from the plastic and petroleum jelly of his early works to the cast metals that figured prominently in “River of Fundament”. With “Redoubt”, 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 four 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 scul-ture 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. “Redoubt” was filmed in Idaho’s rugged Sawtooth Mountains and continues Barney’s long-standing preoccupation with landscape as both a setting and subject in his films. By layering classical, cosmological, and American myths about humanity’s place in the natural world, Redoubt forms a complex portrait of the central Idaho region. Like most of Barney’s previous films, the film is without dialogue; but in a marked shift, Barney has more fully incorporated dance into the narrative of the film, allowing the  characters to communicate choreographically.  Structured as a series of six hunts that unfold over seven days and nights, the film loosely adapts the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter who accidentally trespasses on her and is punished. The Diana of Redoubt is both the protector of the natural world and a predator in it—a present-day sharpshooter in the frigid Idaho wilderness. Accompanied by her attendants, the Calling Virgin and the Tracking Virgin, Diana traverses the mountainous terrain in pursuit of the elusive wolf. The Engraver happens upon the hunting outfit in the forest and begins stalking the trio, furtively documenting their actions in a series of copper engravings. He brings his plates to a remote trailer housing a rudimentary laboratory, where the Electroplater subjects them to an electrochemical transformation. In a pivotal scene near the end of the film, the Engraver encounters a sixth character, the Hoop Dancer,  who rehearses a Native American dance in a nearby town. Her complex movement sequence unites her with the other characters across time and space, as the film progresses to a climactic moment of cosmic and terrestrial reversal.

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, Actors: 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.

Info: Curator: Pamela Franks, Yale University Art Gallery, 1111 Chapel St, New Haven, Connecticut, Duration: 1/3-16/6/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Wed & Fri 10:00-17:00, Thu 10:00-20:00, Sat-sun 11:00-17:00, https://artgallery.yale.edu