Toey's Research on Matthew Barney and Elmgreen & Dragset

MATTHEW BARNEY

(Born March 25, 1967)

Barney talking at Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

An American artist who works in sculpture, photography,

  drawing and film.

 Barney born in March 25, 1967, in San Francisco, California. He lived in

  Boise, Idaho from 1973 to 1985, where he attended elementary,

  middle, and high school. His parents divorced and his mother moved to New York City,

  where he would frequently visit, and where he was introduced to the

  art scene. In 1989, he graduated from Yale University. His earliest works,

  created at Yale, were staged at the university’s Payne Whitney

  Gymnasium. In the 90s Barney moved to New York, where he worked as a

  male model. Barney lives with his partner, singer Björk, with whom he had a

  daughter in 2002. His early works are sculptural installations combined with

  performance and video. Between 1994 and 2002 he

  created the “CREMASTER Cycle”.

        The best 2 well-known works:        Drawing Restraint (2005)

                                                                    Cremaster Cycle    (1994-2002)

Barney as an actor in Cremaster Cycle No. 3

DRAWING RESTRAINT

(1987-Present)

Barney's theory is "Encumbrance can be used to strengthen an

  artists output, much as resistance is used by athletes to build muscle" 

In this video, Barney jumps on a trampoline which has been set at

an angle, attempting to draw two linked field emblems on the ceiling.

The ongoing Drawing Restraint series began in 1987 as a

  series of studio experiments, drawing upon an athletic model of

  development in which growth occurs only through restraint the

  muscle encounters resistance, becomes engorged and is broken

  down, and in healing becomes stronger. In literally restraining the

  body while attempting to make a drawing

The Drawing Restraint series is a project Barney began while an

  undergraduate at Yale.

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 1–6         1987–89

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 7             1993

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 8             2003

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 9             2005

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 10-16      2005-07     

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 17-18      2010

 DRAWING RESTRAINT 19           2011-Present

CREMASTER CYCLE

(1994-2002)

An art project consisting of five feature length films, together with

  related sculptures, photographs, drawings, and artist's books; it is

  the best-known work of American visual artist and filmmaker.

The films were not made in numerical order (1–5), but rather in the

  order 4, 1, 5, 2, 3 – precisely, 4 in 1994, 1 in 1995, 5 in 1997, 2 in

  1999, 3 in 2002.

The films are significantly different in length; the longest

  (and last-made) is #3, at over 3 hours, while the remaining four are

  approximately 1 hour each, for a total of approximately 7 hours.

  #3 itself is almost half the total length.

The five films progress from a state of undifferentiated gender (a

  fully ascended cremaster muscle, represented by floating Goodyear

  Blimps and other symbols), through the organism's struggle to resist 

  gender definition, to the inevitable point where maleness can no

  longer be denied (complete descension of the cremaster and release

  of the testes)Moreover, Barney usually talks about the vertical 

movement and compare the high building with a male sexual organ.

Biologically, the cremaster is a muscle that raises and lowers the

  testicles. Barney uses the descension of the cremaster muscle as a

  symbol for the onset of male gender (which they are thinking that

  most of the artist got the inspriration from sex/gender)

CREMASTER No.3

 (2002)

Cremaster 3 have a lenght of 182 minutes (which counted as the

  longest film anong the rest of them). The authors will see the

  sculpture, architecture and dancing and many more of strange 

  scenes, While the story in the films is about the combination of a

  legendary and the mystery especially a Freemasin doctrine, the

  Guinness whisky, the Giant that can steal the time.

Cremaster3 is about the Chrysler Building in New York City and

  the power of create and destroy from Richard Serra.

Another main character is the Entered Apprenticed (Matthew Barney)

  that trying to reach to the top of the Chrysler Building from the lobby

  and he will meet the obstacle while he is going to the top, include

  the event in the Cloud cafe. And this is the most mentioned part of

  the film by the comentator that was about -the Apprentices got strip

  off his clothes and saw the male sexual organ that unusual from the

  origin, got forced to eat the car machine until his stomarch was

  explode and the rest of his organ were melting.

The commentator mentioned that Cremaster seems like movie Crash, Naked Lunch, The Fly etc. but totally different from the fantasy movie The lord of the rings, Harry Potter, Star wars. Pat Stear said that 

“Those People who being familiar with Barney’s art works will exactly knows that he dont have any of purpose to make the author understand his works ”

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET

Michael Elmgreen Born 1961 Copenhagen, Denmark

  Ingar Dragset Born 1969 Trondheim, Norway.

They worked together as an artist duo since 1995. Their work

  explores the relationship between art, architecture and design.

  They are known for art work that has wit and subversive humour,

  and also addresses serious cultural concerns.

The duo met in Copenhagen in 1995, when Michael Elmgreen,

  was writing and performing poetry, and Ingar Dragset, a Norwegian

  was studying theater. For the first 10 years of their artistic

  collaboration, they were a couple.

       

Since 1997, the artists have presented a great number of

  architectural and sculptural installations in an ongoing series of

  works entitled “Powerless Structures” in which they transformed

  the conventions of the “white cube” gallery space, creating galleries

  suspended from the ceiling, sunk into the ground.

Social Mobility was part of their touring exhibition “The Welfare

  Show,” which was investigating socio-political power structures.

  Via a targeted intervention in the function or functionality of a

  waiting room, the artists create room for new and altered

  interpretations. The sculptural installation morphs into the staged

  scenery of a psycho-architecture, spread out the hopelessness

  of current social conditions.