ART CITIES:N.York-Matthew Barney

Since graduating from Yale in 1989, Matthew Barney has made a rapid impact on the art world. In 1994 Barney embarked on the “CREMASTER” cycle, possibly Barney’s most complex work, which consists of five feature length films that he wrote, directed and performed in. The cycle explores the creation of form gender and sexuality constructing a personal mythology. Alongside each film, Barney created sculptures, photographs and drawings relating to the themes and imagery within the cycle. An exhibition of the whole cycle went on public display at the Guggenheim in New York in 2002.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Gladstone Gallery Archive

The drawings, etchings, and sculpture in Matthew Barney’s solo exhibition “Embrasure” draw from the narratives, processes, and imagery introduced in Barney’s latest project “Redoubt” (2018) while expanding on its allegorical and cosmological themes. Barney’s film is set on a wolf hunt in Idaho’s rugged Sawtooth Mountains, continuing the artist’s long-standing preoccupation with landscape as both setting and subject. The film adopts the ancient myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a hunter who trespasses on her, as its narrative framework. In “Redoubt”, an Engraver, played by Barney, creates a series of plein-air drawings on copper plates as he stalks Diana and her attendants. An Electroplater in a remote laboratory subjects them to a chemical process that transforms the Engraver’s drawings: each plate is immersed in an electroplating solution, causing copper growths to form on the engraved lines. Her actions, undertaken with a ritualistic focus, transform the engravings into talismanic objects, connecting them to Barney’s work in drawing, sculpting, and performance. The drawings in the exhibition, made with graphite and charcoal in the artist’s richly colored plastic frames, take the characters, sites, and iconography of “Redoubt” as points of departure into a world more ominous and strange. In these intricate drawings, Diana is rendered as a fierce deity, replete with tactical gear; Actaeon, whose mythical death is only a subtext in the film, is here fully transformed and impaled on a burnt tree. Ornate fortresses of war allude to the military architecture that inspired this new project and its title; elevation maps are abstracted into feverish patterns. Barney’s fascination with the topography of Idaho is equaled here by a fixation on the celestial landscape, as the Lupus constellation – the wolf – appears in several drawings. In the exhibition, Barney also debuts a series of etchings that combine traditional printmaking processes with the electroplating technique developed in “Redoubt”. In this case, a network of copper is propagated through minute pores in the paper etchings, creating nodules that partially obscure the engraved lines. In addition to the works on paper, Barney presents a new sculpture, which he made with a tree harvested from a forest fire area in the Sawtooth Mountains. The work was made by pouring molten brass and copper into a hollowed-out recess in the tree, creating a unique cast that layers the two metals in an unrepeatable organic form.

Born in 1967 in San Francisco, California, Barney spent much of his childhood in Boise, Idaho. In 1985, he was recruited by Yale University to play football. Initially planning to study pre-med, Barney found himself drawn to the arts; however, his experiences as an athlete and interest in biology and the human body would remain central to his practice. While still a student, Barney began work on the “Drawing Restraint cycle” (1987- ), which takes as its point of departure the principle by which muscles develop in response to increasing resistance. After graduation, Barney moved to New York where he continued to expand on themes of physicality and sexuality, and, in 1991 at the age of 24, Barney was honored with a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1994, Barney embarked upon his best-known and most ambitious project, The “CREMASTER Cycle” (1994-2002). Named for the muscle that lowers the testicles, the five film series features Barney in numerous roles, from the notorious murderer Gary Gilmore to Harry Houdini, in a visually extravagant exploration of creation, identity and sexual differentiation. He has continued to receive wide attention for his “River of Fundament” (2006-14) and “Redoubt” (2017-19) projects.

Info: Gladstone Gallery, 130 East 64th Street, New York, Duration: 26/10-21/12/19, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, https://gladstonegallery.com