Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst

Matthew Barney – Bildungsroman

26 Feb - 15 May 2016

Matthew Barney
works from Cremaster 3, 2002
Installation view from the exhibition Bildungsroman, 2016
Photo: Christian Øen
MATTHEW BARNEY – BILDUNGSROMAN
26 February – 15 May 2016

Curators: Gunnar B. Kvaran and Therese Möllenhoff

Matthew Barney (b.1967, San Francisco, USA) is arguably the artist of the 1990s who most profoundly changed the language of sculpture.

He achieved this through the introduction of new materials, from petroleum jelly to gym equipment, the conflation of media and narrative structures, and his enigmatic biological fictions that are at once hilarious and monstrous. For Barney, sculpture is an emanation of places, performances, films, photos, drawings and ephemera, in which he is typically the story’s protagonist.

For this exhibition Barney has created a new layout and a narrative that goes from Facility of DECLINE (1991) through The CREMASTER Cycle (1994–2002) and DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 (2005) to River of Fundament (2014). The title of the exhibition, Bildungsroman, makes use of the literary term for a coming-of-age novel, thus reflecting how the constellation of works can be read as a journey in the shaping of Barney’s artistic practice.
 

Tags: Matthew Barney