Movies: Matthew Barney

Visionary artist Matthew Barney returns to cinema with this 3-part epic, a radical reinvention of Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings. In collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler, Barney combines traditional modes of narrative cinema with filme...

A compilation of erotic films intended to illuminate the points where art meets sexuality....

CREMASTER 4 (1994) adheres most closely to the project's biological model. This penultimate episode describes the system's onward rush toward descension despite its resistance to division. The logo for this chapter is the Manx triskelion - three iden...

Cremaster 5 is a five-act opera (sung in Hungarian) set in late-ninteenth century Budapest. The last film in the series, Cremaster 5 represents the moment when the testicles are finally released and sexual differentiation is fully attained. The lamen...

CREMASTER 3 (2002) is set in New York City and narrates the construction of the Chrysler Building, which is in itself a character - host to inner, antagonistic forces at play for access to the process of (spiritual) transcendence. These factions find...

CREMASTER 2 is rendered as a gothic Western that introduces conflict into the system. On the biological level it corresponds to the phase of fetal development during which sexual division begins. In Matthew Barney's abstraction of this process, the s...

An ordinary family goes on a trip by car, but their car breaks down. The dutiful father of the family immediately sets off to get help and seems to find it with a nice elderly lady. The woman invites the whole family to dinner, but the hospitality so...

The film concerns the theme of self-imposed limitation and continues Matthew Barney's interest in religious rite, this time focusing on Shinto....

Esoteric rituals are enacted within the vicinity of a Dunkin' Donuts—itself housed in a shopping center—located in Reykjavík, Iceland, wherein Nammu, Sumerian goddess of creation, is found to be an employee....

The goddess Diana and her two attendants traverse the rugged terrain of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in pursuit of the elusive wolf. An Engraver (Matthew Barney) furtively documents their actions in copper engravings and provokes a series of confrontat...

Commissioned as part of the Destricted Short Film Series, 'Hoist' was shot in Bahia, Salvador. It's described by the director as "a juxtaposition of sexuality and industrial machinery"....

Hesitation to recover a dropped pearl results in a delay-of-game penalty play....

How does artist Matthew Barney use 45,000 pounds of petroleum jelly, a factory whaling vessel and traditional Japanese rituals to create his latest art project? Barney plowed the waters off the coast of Nagasaki to film his massive endeavor, Drawing ...

Secondary maps two different narratives onto each other, using movement as the formal through-line. The first describes the complex overlay of violence and spectacle inherent in American football, and more broadly within American culture. Barney’s pe...

In September 2021, Barney and Bepler presented a live performance at Schaulager titled ‘Catasterism in Three Movements.’ CATASTERISM draws from documentation of those performances and expands the narrative with cinematic scenes filmed in the gallerie...

CREMASTER 1 (1995) is a musical revue performed on the blue Astroturf playing field of Bronco Stadium in Boise, Idaho - Barney's hometown. Two Goodyear Blimps float above the arena like the airships that often transmit live sporting events via televi...

For his five Cremaster films Matthew Barney's created a multitude of sculptural forms and structures. Recently both the sculptures and the films traveled to museums in Cologne, Paris and New York's Guggenheim. In THE CREMASTER CYCLE: A Conversation w...

A "video action" in which Barney crosses the ceiling of the Gladstone Gallery using a harness and ice-climbing screws, propelling himself by the forces of muscle and will....

Goo, orifice fixation, medical procedures, non-human/inanimate entities considered as bodies. Scabaction records the welding of a sculpture, some antics with Vaseline, and the removal of an ingrown hair....

Redoubt unfolds as a series of hunts in the wilderness of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, led by Diana, a modern-day sharpshooter. The characters communicate a mythological narrative through dance, letting movement replace language as they pursue each ot...