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Matthew Barney in "Consumption"Preview
Matthew Barney is best known as the producer and creator of the CREMASTER films. The title of the films refers to the muscle that raises and lowers the male reproductive system according to temperature, external stimulation, or fear.
The films themselves are a grand mixture of history, autobiography, and mythology—a universe in which symbols are densely layered and interconnected.
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Matthew Barney entered the art world after graduating from Yale in 1991 to almost instant controversy and success. He is best known as the producer and creator of the Cremaster films, a series of five visually extravagant works created out of sequence. The films generally feature Barney in myriad roles, including characters as diverse as a satyr, a magician, a ram, Harry Houdini, and even the infamous murderer Gary Gilmore. The films themselves are a grand mixture of history, autobiography, and mythology—an intensely private universe in which symbols and images are densely layered and interconnected. The resulting cosmology is both beautiful and complex.
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