Matthew Barney - the Cremaster cycle - 10.10.02 - 05.01.2003 - Paris

[claudia westermann]

http://www.guggenheim.org/press_releases/barney.html

http://www.paris-france.org/musees/MAMVP/expositions/barney/barney_accueil_angl.htm

[»Matthew Barney : The Cremaster Cycle« | Musée d'Art Moderne de la 
Ville de Paris, Paris [F] | 10.10.02 - 05.01.2003]

For the first time in France, Matthew Barney presents the Cremaster 
cycle in its entirety, in a unique installation that combines the 
languages of cinema and sculpture.

Matthew Barney (born in 1967) launched the cycle in 1994, with the 
film Cremaster 4 which was followed by Cremasters 1, 5, and 2. This 
particularly ambitious project, which the artist has worked on 
exclusively for eight years, concluded this year with Cremaster 3.

>From his earliest artistic performances, the American artist, and 
former athlete, has tested the limits of his own body. Here he 
pursues this project by referencing different biological mechanisms, 
such as the ascending and descending movements controlled by the 
cremaster muscle, as well as the sexual indeterminacy of the embryo 
during the six weeks after conception, prior to the formation of 
reproductive organs. This lack of differentiation opens up a realm of 
potential that the artist uses as a leitmotif throughout his artistic 
process.

In the spirit of the romantic idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk (the total 
work of art), Matthew Barney's practice encompasses all media, 
without any hierarchy. Drawings, photographs and sculptures accompany 
the films as autonomous material forms. In this way, a 
multi-dimensional body of work is elaborated through both space and 
time.

>From the beginning, Matthew Barney has shown a preference for 
malleable materials-petroleum jelly, wax, plastic resin-in a constant 
oscillation between form and "informe." This is revealed in the work 
that opens the exhibition, Partition, a bar covered in frozen 
petroleum jelly, a form of which appears in Cremaster 3.

Eschewing linear narration and univocal readings, Matthew Barney 
develops a multi-referential iconography in his films. Each episode 
takes place in a specific locale-the Isle of Man, the Bonneville Salt 
Flats in Utah, the city of Budapest. Architecture can also be likened 
to a character in itself, as in the case with Bronco Stadium or the 
Chrysler Building.

For each Cremaster installment, identified by its own emblem and 
color, the artist has been inspired by specific epochs and genres. 
Thus, in his vision mythology mingles with professional athletics, 
Hollywood cinema with magic, psychoanalysis with "hard-core" music.

For his exhibition at ARC in Paris, Matthew Barney has conceived an 
original presentation that exploits the organic fluidity and 
circularity of the architecture. From the Astroturf-covered floor, 
the padded passageways, and the intense and uniform lighting 
throughout, his choices work together to provide a comprehensive and 
coherent character to the exhibition, thus acting as an extension of 
the work therein.