Matthew Barney

Matthew Barney (born March 25, 1967, San Francisco, California, U.S.) is an American sculptor and video artist whose five-part Cremaster film cycle was praised for its inventiveness. Some art critics consider him one of the most significant artists of his generation.

Following his graduation from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut (B.A., 1989), which he attended on a football scholarship, Barney moved to New York City. He had his first one-man show in 1991. This and later shows consisted chiefly of videotaped recordings of performance art—notably one in which the nude artist climbed the walls and ceiling of an art gallery—and petroleum jelly sculptures.

His Cremaster series, named for the muscle that raises and lowers the testicles, explored sexual differentiation and the various stages of creation, central themes in much of Barney’s work. The series consists of Cremaster 4 (1995), Cremaster 1 (1996), Cremaster 5 (1997), Cremaster 2 (1999), and Cremaster 3 (2002), which together are provocative and visually rich exercises in suggestive psychological fantasy and myth. Barney directed and wrote each video and appeared as an actor in most of them; their consummate special effects are accompanied by a pictorial lushness that has earned them a nearly cult following.

In 2007 Barney began collaborating with composer Jonathan Bepler on the feature film River of Fundament (2014). Loosely based on Norman Mailer’s novel Ancient Evenings (1983), the work is an exploration of waste in all its forms, reincarnation, and car manufacturing. Like the Cremaster series, it includes a collection of related sculptures, drawings, and photographs. Barney’s next work, Redoubt (2019), draws on Ovid’s tale of Diana, Roman goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon and utilizes choreography to explore gun ownership and the use of land in the United States.