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Indepth Arts News:
"MATTHEW BARNEY CREMASTER 2:THE DRONES' EXPOSITION"
1999-07-18 until 1999-10-10
Walker Art Center
Minneapolis, MN,
USA United States of America
New York-based artist Matthew Barney has become well known for the unique combination of obsessive athletic endeavors with
his own highly personalized mythology. Crossing from sculpture to film to video, he seamlessly creates dramas of compelling,
compulsive force that inhabit a zone between the psychological and the physical. In this exhibition, the Walker Art Center
presents the world premiere of Matthew Barneys latest film, Cremaster 2.
n this installment of Barneys ongoing Cremaster cycle, an elliptical narrative unfolds around
the films anti-hero, convicted killer Gary Gilmore, who is played by Barney himself. Loosely
based on the life of Gilmore as chronicled by Norman Mailer in his book The Executioners
Song, the film moves from a glacier field in the Canadian Rockies to the Bonneville Salt Flats,
from Utah in 1976 to Chicago in 1893. Bees, bison, magicians, mediums, murders,
heavy-metal drummers, two-steppers, mounties, and others inhabit the films hallucinatory
landscape. Featured in the cast of Cremaster 2 are Norman Mailer and Dave Lombardo,
former lead drummer for the band Slayer.
Composer Jonathan Bepler provides the original musical score for the film, with vocals by
Steve Tucker of Morbid Angel and Patty Griffin. The film is screened in a sculptural installation
in the gallery that includes a nylon cabinet with saline saturated barbells, a model of a
mountain range sculpted in salt, a mirrored riding saddle, and a suite of portrait photographs
of glaciers.
The development of Barneys unique mythological vision can be seen most clearly in his
series of Cremaster films, which have been his primary artistic focus since 1994. In his three
previous installments of these cinematic operas, Cremaster 4 (1994), Cremaster 1 (1995),
and Cremaster 5 (1997), the artist conceived a highly stylized motorcycle race on the Isle of
Man, a Busby Berkeley-inspired performance on the football field of the University of Idaho in
Boise, and a fantastic voyage through Budapest.
Barney graduated from Yale University in 1989, and has had major exhibitions at the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris, the
Museum Boymans-van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Tate Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Bern,
and Portikus in Frankfurt. In 1993 he won the Europa 2000 award at the 45th Venice Biennale
and in 1996 received the first annual Hugo Boss Award from the Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, New York.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by Walker Chief Curator Richard Flood and full-color
reproductions. Softcover: $45 ($33.75 Walker members). A limited edition lithograph of Barneys Cremaster 5 is also
available.
This limited-edition Cremaster 5 print, which depicts a double image of actress Ursula Andress, who stars in Barneys film of
the same title, is now available in the Walker Shops. Each 33-by-23-inch lithograph is signed and numbered by the artist.
$500. Proceeds from the sale of this work benefit the Walker and New Yorks Film Forum.
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