![]() ![]() Metrograph is hosting a rare screening of all five parts in the order in which they were created, which is not the order in which they are numbered, culminating with an in-person conversation with Barney and frequent collaborator Maggie Nelson. ![]() Moving between the worlds of fine art and provocation, Barney is probably best known for his epic, eight-year, and five-film project “The Cremaster Cycle” (398 min), undertaken between 19. He is known for an ongoing video and photography series called Drawing Restraint, which describes a line between muscle growth and artistic production River of Fundament is a three-act opera based on Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings “Redoubt” employs the voyeurism and punishment myth of Diana and Actaeon in the exploration of what he called “humanity’s place in the natural world” and now “Secondary,” which dramatizes a fateful American football game in which Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley is paralyzed in 1978 by a violent hit from Oakland Raiders defensive back Jack Tatum. His is the stuff of violent mass spectacle, human achievements on grand architectural and operatic scales, secret societies, and arcane rituals, and how the miracle of it all that creation is just an imperfect, Frankensteinian mirror to the mysterious and overlooked functions of biology.īarney’s work emerges from tension, the titles of his pieces providing the ends of threads that, once pulled, open him up for contemplation, contextualization, and sometimes dissection. It seems like heady stuff, and it’s true that avant-garde cinema is not for every taste, but there’s an intoxicating compulsion and approachability to Barney’s work. Secondary’s premiere is one of the top art events taking place in New York this May, a particularly busy time when fairs like Frieze, Independent, and NADA take place alongside marquee sales held by the top auction houses.Three of his earliest works, bundled together as the “OTTO Trilogy,” trace what the Gladstone Gallery called “the training, discipline, and physical limits of the body alongside questions of sexual difference and desire.” Centered around former football player Jim Otto, not only is his name a palindrome, but his uniform number “00” suggests the infinity symbol and the concept of doubling while also working as a visual depiction of cellular meiosis-that is, the cell division of gametes, sex cells, in sexually-reproducing organisms. “As the tide rises, the trench floods with river water, keeping time for the narrative the evolution of the characters becomes tethered to the slow exposition of this broken structure,” the synopsis reads. Perhaps the most intriguing element, however, is what is described as a trench that has been set in the floor of Barney’s studio. His early sculptures even incorporated uniforms and other objects related to the sport often, they were intended as critiques of machismo and masculinity inherent in American culture.īarney himself appears in Secondary, and as usual for his films, the composer Jonathan Bepler has provided the score. This plot seems to align the film with past works by Barney, who was even recruited by Yale University to play football when he was an undergraduate. The other is “a material-based choreography” in which Barney’s cast members were made to mold the materials he commonly uses to make his sculptures. One “describes the complex overlay of violence and spectacle inherent in American football, and more broadly within American culture,” paying homage to Barney’s own experience as an athlete and to a 1978 incident that left Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots, paralyzed. Per a description on its website, Secondary knits together two elements. Monument Wars in the U.K., Matthew Barney-Installed Clock Goes Dark, and More: Morning Links from January 19, 2021 Secondary, however, sounds like a return to some of the material mined in his most famous work, The Cremaster Cycle (1994–2002), an epic, five-part group of films that explored sexual development and featured prosthetics, fantastical beings, the artist Richard Serra, the writer Norman Mailer, and much more. Redoubt was minor-key Barney-it was quiet, somber, and slow, although his fascination with Americana and the carnage intertwined with the histories related to it remained. The show is likely to be Barney’s biggest in New York in years, and the work itself is his first moving-image piece since Redoubt, which played theatrically and in galleries starting in 2019. The work, titled Secondary, is set to be unveiled to the public at his studio in Long Island City on May 12. Cremasterheads, hold on to your hats: Matthew Barney, the artist known for his epic film cycles involving ritual-like ceremonies and abject body horror, is back with a new video installation due to premiere soon in New York. ![]()
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