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MATTHEW BARNEY |
Hailed as the "… most compelling and richly imaginative artist to emerge in years," Matthew Barney is best known for a series of films that he made between 1994 and 2002 called The CREMASTER Cycle. The Albright-Knox Art Gallery has acquired a series of five color photographs related to this infamous film project. Each is a classically composed portrait of one of the central characters from the five films in the series: Goodyear from CREMASTER 1, 1995, played by Marti Domination; Gary Gilmore from CREMASTER 2, 1999, played by Matthew Barney; the Entered Apprentice from CREMASTER 3, 2002, played by Matthew Barney; the Loughton Candidate from CREMASTER 4, 1994, played by Matthew Barney; and the Queen of Chain from CREMASTER 5, 1997, played by Ursula Andress.
These characters each play a role in the highly personal and complex narrative of Barney’s five-part film cycle. Beginning with a 1930s-style musical on a football field in Boise, Idaho, (CREMASTER 1); the films include a Gothic Western focused on the execution of Gary Gilmore (CREMASTER 2); the mythic athletic struggles of the Entered Apprentice climbing the ramps of the Guggenheim Museum in New York (CREMASTER 3); the intertwined story of two motorcycle racers and a tap dancing satyr on the Isle of Man (CREMASTER 4); and a tragic love story set in nineteenth-century Budapest (CREMASTER 5).
The title "cremaster" refers to the set of muscles that raises and lowers the male reproductive system in response to external stimuli. However, this biological link to sexual potential and differentiation is only one aspect of Barney’s densely symbolic and multi-layered story. His eccentric vision melds the biological with the mythological, aesthetics with athletics, and the wonderful with the weird.
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects