The Body as Matrix: Matthew Barney's Cremaster Cycle

With the five-part Cremaster Cycle of films multi-award-winning artist Matthew Barney invented a densely layered and interconnected sculptural world that surreally combines sports biology sexuality history and mythology as it organically evolves. In this program Barney Guggenheim curator Nancy Spector and others deconstruct the Cycle’s filming and subsequent translation into sculptural installations. The locations characters and symbols that organize the Cycle films; the Cycle installations as spatial content carriers and extensions of the performances; and objectification of the body and undifferentiated sexuality are addressed as are the intricacies of costuming makeup and sculpting with Barney’s signature materials: plastic metal and Vaseline.