Happy New Year: More Matthew Barney Top 10's

Matthew Barney is all over Artforum's annual "Best Of" issue, starting with an image from Guardian of the Veil on the cover (circled in red above).

The next mention of Barney's work is in David Byrne's top 10 list of the best music of 2007. Byrne lists Jonathan Bepler's score for Barney's De Lama Lamina as #7 (even though the video was released in 2004, apparently Byrne didn't see it until 2007). Byrne writes, "Bepler realized the common but challenging ambition of making ordinary sounds, speech, and environmental noises into music."

Barney receives two mentions in "The Artists' Artists" section, where Artforum asked a group of artists to list their favorite exhibitions of 2007. Tatzu Nishu selects All in the Present Must Be Transformed: Matthew Barney and Joseph Beus at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, "An amazing show that illuminated the commonalities between two artists of seemingly different styles and generations. Not merely the best exhibition of 2007 but the best I've seen in three years. I hope curators will emulate this approach, rather than recycle the same old themes. Be fresh, have a new point of view." Keith Tyson chooses Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint at the Serpentine Gallery, London, "Bizarre props, tales of athletic endurance, and esoteric mythologies filled the building in Hyde Park to bursting. Like some nineteenth-century explorer returning from his adventures in exotic lands, the biomythical Barney is living his dream -- that of an interdisciplinary systems analyst with an expanded sense of potential for drawing, sculpture, and human identity."

Finally, professor and critic Claire Bishop places "Matthew Barney's bull in Il Tempo del Postino" at the Opera House, Manchester, UK in her top 10. "At the end of an evening of otherwise patchy performance art by seventeen international artists, Barney, with a dog on his head, took command of the theater. Halfway through the enigmatic proceedings, a mythologically proportioned bull was led onto the stage and encouraged to enjoy sexual congress with a sculptural appendage fixed to the back of a Cadillac. The garlanded, golden-horned beast failed to rise to the occaision -- despite the presence of contortionists, balaclava-clad trumpeters, and ample quantities of Vaseline. I was left feeling ritually contaminated. Utterly inexplicable."

Matthew Barney at Sadie Coles HQ

In addition to the Drawing Restraint exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, Londoners will be able to view a Matthew Barney exhibition at the new Sadie Coles Gallery (designed by Douglas Stewart Architects) at 69 South Audley Street. Although for some reason there is no mention of the exhibition on the Sadie Coles web site, other reputable sources report the exhibition will run from September 29 - November 10.

Serpentine Gallery Reviews and Interviews

The British press has run a number of articles about Matthew Barney's work to coincide with yesterday's opening of his exhibtion at the Serpentine Gallery.

For some reason, both articles in The Guardian refer to Barney (somewhat derisively) as "the American Damien Hirst." Jonathan Jones's review of the exhibition is fairly negative:

"Barney is only really famous among curators, critics and other artists. The most pop-cultural thing about him is being the boyfriend of the Icelandic singer Björk...[The sculptures at the Serpentine Gallery] relate to Drawing Restraint 9, about to be screened in London, but not at the gallery. It's not that they're bad; you just wonder what they are for. It's the work of an unthinking craftsman, turning out beautifully honed mother-of-pearl objects with no function...The real problem is that Barney's long, beautiful, sterile film Drawing Restraint 9, the source of these works, doesn't itself have the energy of The Cremaster Cycle."

However, Jones does concede, "The Cremaster Cycle, was one of the most striking works of art to come out of America in recent times."

Read the whole article: http://film.guardian.co.uk/features/featurepages/0,,2172992,00.html

The Guardian also published a more in depth (and positive) article about Barney by Sean O'Hagan. In the article, Bjork says:

"Creatively, Matthew and I take opposite approaches that end in the same point,' she says. 'He enjoys restraint and discipline and thrives on it like a sportsman. Growing up, he had the athlete's attitude to limits. I was in a punk band, ignoring all restraints and embracing freedom. I still seek those heightened moments of freedom in my work. He does it the other way around, if that makes sense."

And Barney says of his process:

"The films are narratives, definitely,' he says. 'In fact, the way I put them together is not so different to the way I read other more conventional narratives. I actually find it very hard to read a book beginning to end and go completely inside that narrative. I have to be able to apply my day-to-day life to that narrative for there to be an even fractured understanding of that book. I have read a number of books where I have no idea what they are about in a narrative sense, but I am pretty confident I have a good sense of what the base of the story is."

Read the whole article: http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2163539,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront

The Times's Morgan Falconer has a mixed opinion of Barney:

"For some, Barney’s success is to have found ways to talk about subjects such as sex and gender through fabulous allegories and slick films. Others are attracted to his persuasive yoking of film and sculpture. But for others, Barney’s work is tediously hermetic and self-indulgent. Had he been at all concerned about such accusations, though, he surely would not have engaged Björk to work on this new film, but he says that it simply made sense."

The article concludes with Barney stating that he has planned a trip down the Nile -- no doubt a chance to research imagery for Guarding the Veil.

Read the whole article: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article2482235.ece

If any of our British readers have photos from the Serpentine Gallery opening, please email them to us.

Serpentine Gallery Contest and Drawing Restraint Volume V Book

The Observer is giving away 125 pairs of tickets to a private view of The Serpentine Gallery's Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint on September 24. To qualify for the tickets, all you have to do is answer a (very easy) trivia question HERE before midnight tonight. You should also, of course, live in the London area.

The Serpentine Gallery has just announced that they are producing a new publication, Drawing Restraint Volume V, to accompany the exhibition. "This lavishly illustrated publication will include new texts on Barney’s Drawing Restraint series by New York-based writer and curator Neville Wakefield, Serpentine Gallery’s Chief Curator Kitty Scott and a short story by the award-winning Icelandic poet and lyricist Sjón. The book will also include previously unpublished images of Barney’s recent artworks."

http://www.serpentinegallery.org/2007/09/drawing_restraint_volume_vmatt.html

Matthew Barney at the Serpentine Gallery

The Serpentine Gallery in London will present an exhibition of Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint series from September 20 - November 11. The exhibition will include works from each Drawing Restraint from 1 through 15. In conjunction with the Serpentine, the Gate Picturehouse is screening Drawing Restraint 9 throughout the fall.

Barney will appear at a couple of events during the opening of the exhibition. On September 20, Barney and Hans-Ulrich Obrist will appear in conversation and present a special screening of Drawing Restraint 9. On September 21 Barney will screen three short films: Scab Action, Drawing Restraint 13, and De Lama Lamina.

The Serpentine Gallery is offering an exclusive Limited Edition of 25 boxed-sets of 8 signed and numbered photogravure prints, created by Matthew Barney. The prints are presented in a special box designed and produced by the artist. The edition is priced at £9,500 for the set of 8 prints.