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Matthew Barney - The Cremaster Cycle
About Matthew Barney
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Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in 1967; at age six, he moved to Boise, Idaho. When his parents separated, Barney continued to live with his father in Idaho, while his mother, an abstract painter, moved to New York City. As a teenager Barney played football on his high school team. His experiences as an athlete informed his earliest work. For his thesis exhibition at Yale University, he created an installation of video and sculptural objects that combined the physicality of sports, the fetishistic nature of athletic equipment, and the endurance involved in performance art. After graduating college Barney moved to New York City and entered the art world to almost instant success.
Between 1988 and 1993, Barney developed the Drawing Restraint series. He devised situations of self-imposed restriction, such as jumping on a trampoline, climbing over obstacles, or restraining himself with surgical latex hosing, through which he would produce artworks. In this series he explored the feasibility of creating something under severe physical constraints.
Between 1990 and 1991, Barney also created video, photography, and sculptural pieces such as The Jim Otto Suite (1990), which features fictional characters who function as metaphors for thematic motifs throughout the work. Barney has enlisted historical characters such as football hero Jim Otto, escape artist Harry Houdini, and convicted murderer Gary Gilmore as symbolic characters within his narratives.
In 1994, Barney began work on his epic Cremaster cycle, a five-part film project accompanied by related sculptures, photographs, and drawings. Barney’s work continues to explore the transcendence of physical limitations in a multi-media art practice that includes feature-length films, video installations, sculpture, photography, and drawing. At age 36, Matthew Barney is the youngest artist ever to have a retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum.