Matthew Barney is a one-man baroque revival. And, this winter, in the Musée d'art Moderne de la Ville de Paris' ARC contemporary wing... his startling installation series promises to shake France's art world out of its recent doldrums.
Welcome to Barney's world — a place inhabited by mutants, satyrs and gorgeous models in stunning costumes who wander through palatial interiors and incredible landscapes. “Cremaster” is indeed brazenly baroque in its sheer profusion of visual detail. By “fusing” sculpture and film in a sequence of monumental installations within which one sits to watch ongoing video projections on XL screens, Barney has created a fresh and exciting new art form for the 21st century.
Combined with monumental “in situ” sculpture, photography and drawings, his videos of filmed performances generate an accumulation of contradictory images that both seduce and disturb, drawing the viewer into a strange otherworldly sense of reality.
The film's title refers to the cremaster muscle in the male genitals from which the testicles are suspended. Barney’s Cremaster series is an ambitious project composed of five films produced on a cinematic scale. They are shot in the video format, but with such cinematic elaboration that they resemble Hollywood extravaganzas, rather than the classically simple video/body art genre identified with artists like Bruce Nauman. Here, the absence of spoken words boosts the onlooker's rapport with performance art.
Barney — who is. married to Icelandic singer Björk — first studied medicine before graduating from Yale in 1991, and becoming an artist. He instantly sparked a mix of controversy and acclaim as the producer and creator of the Cremaster films in which he is himself featured in various incarnations. For instance, as a magician, a ram, Houdini, and the murderer Gary Gilmore. Supporting roles are played by known figures such as Ursula Andress, Norman Mailer or Frank Stella. Each mise-en-scène constitutes an extravagant remix of mythology and historical fact, laced with Barney’s personal symbolism. The resulting images are at once beautiful and complex.
The ongoing “Cremaster Cycle” saga was produced out of sequence, and has several beginnings and at least two possible endings. “Cremaster 1” (1995) was shot in Boise, Idaho in the blue-Astroturf bronco Stadium. Busby Berkeley chorus lines parade, and rows of dancers form the outlines of reproductive organs on a football field. Via alternating images, one deduces that these line formations are actually determined by a mysterious blond who floats above the stadium in a Goodyear blimp, creating anatomical diagrams by aligning rows of grapes. “Cremaster 2” (1999) is a “kinda” gothic western unraveled in the Columbia Icefield in Canada and the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. Gary Gilmore’s story is conveyed through a string of dreamlike, surrealist tableaux. Shot in New York City’s Art Deco Chrysler building, “Cremaster 3" (2002) is a “horror film,” with gangsters... As for, "Cremaster 4” (1994) this is a bizarre “road movie” camped in a vaudeville spirit, which focuses on a satyr dancing through an underwater canal, and fairies picnicking on a grassy knoll. “Cremaster 5” (1997) is set in Budapest and performed as an opera complete with Jacobin pigeons, a lovelorn queen and a tragic hero.
For this Paris exhibition, Matthew Barney has imagined an original architectural concept, in keeping with the museum’s flowing, circular space. The real-life Jacobin pigeons in the museum installation are the crowning touch. They appear to flutter from the screen, as living extensions linking Barney’s “reel life” with the real world. Mathew Barney’s total work of art is a unique experience, offering a first glimpse of the art of tomorrow.
Matthew Barney's Crewmaster Cycle – to Jan.5, 10am to 5:30pm, Tue-Sun, ARC/Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 11 av du Président Wilson, 16e, 3.50-7.50E, tel: 01 53 67 40 00
