Biography

Known for large-scale multimedia projects—often made in series over several years—Matthew Barney is among the most ambitious artists of the past two decades. His work is invested with layers of art-historical references, archetypal imagery, and historical re-enactment. His best-known work, The Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002), is an epic story told through five feature-length films. One of the suite’s recurrent themes uses the biological process of sexual maturation as a metaphor for artistic creation and development. Much of the action is structured in a way that is or alludes to choreography. “My interest in dance has to do with the basic drama of an object in space, interaction with gravity, and the potential for the object to fall over or to fail,” he has said. The work was executed in collaboration with dozens of other artists, including Richard Serra and Norman Mailer. He was awarded the Hugo Boss Prize in 1996 and the Europa 2000 Prize at the 1993 Venice Biennale.