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Who Art You · 13:29

Matthew Barney in "Consumption"

Matthew Barney

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“A system that has an internal object, Freudian narratives—consumer and producer, violence, sexually driven, NFL films—these are the things I think about,” says Matthew Barney.

His CREMASTER series of films twist narrative flow, challenge genres, and interrogate art as they explore the ways “that violence is sublimated into form.” This segment follows Barney and his crew on the set of CREMASTER 3 at the Saratoga race track and at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. At Saratoga, Barney transforms a group of horses into racing corpses; at the Guggenheim, the artist transforms the Museum into a set for an obstacle course/video game.

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Matthew Barney was born in 1967 in San Francisco, California, and grew up in Boise, Idaho. He now lives and works in New York. Barney received his BA from Yale University in 1989, attending the university on a football scholarship. Influenced by his experiences as an athlete, the artist often looks to his physical body and human biology as the vessels through which he communicates his ideas. Through film, installation, and sculpture, Barney documents real actions and builds immersive universes that explore themes of masculinity, athleticism, and mythology.

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