Cremaster 2 Video Game for PS3

One of our favorite Matthew Barney Fans, Cremaster Fanatic Paul, has created a level for the PlayStation3 game Little Big Planet based on Matthew Barney's Cremaster 2. Paul has already created levels inspired by Cremaster 1, Cremaster 3, and Cremaster 4 and plans to create levels to accompany the entire Cremaster Cycle. Paul says he will have to edit the sexual content out of the C2 level before he uploads it to the Little Big Planet web site (where you can play his other levels if you own the game and a PS3), but this video presents the uncensored version.

Matthew Barney Pavillion Erected in Brazil

The New York Times reports that Brazilian art collector Bernardo Paz is building a pavillion to house Matthew Barney's De Lama Lamina at his Instituto Cultural Inhotim near Brumadinho, Brazil. Inhotim is a 3,000 acre museum and sculpture garden featuring large-scale works by artists including Yayoi Kusama, Chris Burden, and Olafur Eliasson. Barney's pavillion will be a permanent installation related to the his 2004 De Lama Lamina collaboration with Arto Lindsay, which was filmed in nearby Salvador de Bahia.

Inhotim's web site says, "De Lama Lâmina (2004-2008) is the first permanent installation developed by Matthew Barney for a museological institution. The artist has chosen to place the work amidst a eucalyptus forest, viewing the displacement experience as part of the project. After walking a winding path to reach the work, the visitor faces a seemingly unfinished scenario: two geodesic domes of steel and glass, attached to each other, amidst iron ore hills and fallen trees. Inside, space is taken by a huge tractor that lifts a resin tree. Used in the shooting and in the performance, the tractor is here transformed into a big sculpture. Tension is generated by bringing together opposite poles that constitute the work’s organizing principle, evoking the dualism between creation and destruction, fertility and death."

Matthew Barney & Bjork Moving to Brooklyn, Selling Manhattan & Upstate Homes

The Real Estalker blog reports that Matthew Barney and Bjork are selling their homes in Manhattan and Snedens Landing, NY and moving to Brooklyn Heights. Their new apartment will be a 3,000 sq. foot pre-war penthouse on Henry Street with wrap-around terrace, fireplace, four bedrooms, and four baths. It is listed at $4.25 million.

In case you'd like to purchase one of the star couple's former homes, the Manhattan apartment is a one-bedroom on W. Houston Street (listed at $1.7 million) and the Snedens Landing house is a six-bedroom located only 30 minutes up the Hudson River Valley from New York City (listed at 1.8 million or available for lease at $7,000 per month).

According to The Real Estalker, the Manhattan apartment features a bedroom painted black, an updated (but tiny) kitchen, and a 500 sq. foot terrace. The Snedens Landing home (in a community dubbed "Hollywood on the Hudson" due to the large number of actors living there) has views of the Hudson River, a stone Master Bedroom, two patios, and an artists studio.

More Blood of Two Photographs

C-Monster and V Magazine have published some more photographs of the early-morning emergence of the artwork for Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton's Blood of Two exhibition at the Deste Foundation in Greece. Follow the links for more pics:

C-Monster

V Magazine

More on Barney & Peyton's Blood of Two

Artforum.com has published their account of the performance/opening of Matthew Barney and Elizabeth Peyton's "Blood of Two" exhibition at the Deste Foundation's new Slaughterhouse exhibition space:

"We sat, watching the sun rise over the lapis-blue Aegean and waiting. For a time, the only action came from those jostling for position on a stone wall above a ravine sloping down to the sea. Finally, a boat pulled into the cove, and a couple of divers went into the water. “They’re going to bring it up now,” said Gavin Brown director Corinna Durland, declining to say what “it” might be. “It’s been down there for two months.” After an indeterminate pause, we could see one diver pulling on a rope attached to a winch on the boat.

This went on for quite a while. Eventually, what looked like a table emerged from the water and was placed on the boat, which then put into shore. Ten Greek laborers in T-shirts and jeans roped the table––actually a bronze display case weighing 750 pounds––as if it were a calf and lifted it onto land, hauling it up a zigzagging stone staircase to the road. Watching them struggle to lift this piece of Barneymania up the slope was almost painful, though the sight kept Juergen Teller glued to his camera. Whenever the ropes slipped out of the men’s hands or one lost his footing, it was clear that the process could crush them. Suddenly, a herd of goats and a few lambs appeared on the road, their bells tinkling, and the whole scene began to feel like an outtake from a Bresson movie.

Then the pallbearers––it was difficult to think of the laborers as anything else––reached the road and placed Barney’s bier on a donkey cart. By this time, we could see five framed drawings under the glass top of the vitrine, which had taken on water. Two of the men appeared carrying a smallish dead shark (a dogfish) and placed it on top. Everyone with a camera closed in on the cart, now hitched to a donkey, and accompanied it in a funereal procession along the coastline toward what was once the island’s slaughterhouse, but is now a Deste Foundation project space, dodging animal droppings all the way. “This road is a perfect metaphor for life,” [curator Massimiliano] Gioni commented. “It’s steep and full of shit.”

Inside the slaughterhouse, on a promontory over the sea, a framed still life by Barney and a drawing by Peyton were hanging in former stalls. In the main room, where there was space for only about fifty witnesses, three of the men worked to get the glass top off the bier. At one point, Peyton craned her neck to check out the drawings in their watery case. “They’re still there,” she whispered to Barney. “The cat looks good.” At last, we could hear water rushing out of the vitrine and down the blood drain to the sea, and the men lifted the glass. Barney looked at his watch. “Just about two hours,” he said to Peyton. “Not bad. After all, there’s a limit to how long you can ask people to wait.” Coming from the king of slow, this seemed even more astonishing than the event.

With the glass removed, the drawings became more legible as they dried. By evening, when Joannou’s organization set a single long table for three hundred in the road above the slaughterhouse, they took on a beautiful glow. Dinner went on for a few hours as the shark roasted on a spit till the flesh fell from its bones."