Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney is heralded as the most influential American artist of his generation for his epic, ravishing, eccentric, and all-consuming work. His films and the sculpture and photographic series that derive from them are biological, mythological, and historical. Drawing Restraint 9 follows his Cremaster Cycle, which was screened, in part, at the Gallery in February 2004, by looking back to a central tenet of his creative vision, an idea that grew out of Barney’s early experience as a athlete: form emerges through struggle with resistance. Drawing Restraint 9 is set on a Japanese whaling ship and stars Barney and his wife Björk in a two-and-one-half-hour film with a haunting and evocative sound track. Exploring the chasm between East and West, the scenes of a Japanese tea ceremony, whaling, sex, and the making of sculpture are edited together in a way that defies standard, cinematic narrative devices. Critic Jerry Saltz called it “...a story that takes place nowhere but that touches on everything.”

Claire Schneider Associate Curator of Contemporary Art

Matthew Barney
Drawing Restraint 9