Tag Archives: Matthew Barney

Ravels in Review Friday (already!)

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Has another week really passed? It seems so here in Art Ravel’s land, which has been hopefully busy despite a recurrence of hangovers.

Reasons to be hopeful:

1) Spring has returned to Manhattan and gallery hopping can commence again, as I document here. Sure, in between then and now we had some freezing days, but a thaw is coming. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

2) YouTube’s content gets more fun by the minute. See Richard Serra shovel Vaseline under Mathew Barney’s direction. Not to be missed.

3) A new play by Moises Kaufman shows us how to make time stand still, in addition to its other good qualities.

4) In another exorbitant claim, a man has discovered the secret of beauty. *Could also be a reason to be hungover.

5)I said goodbye to Culture Pundits, and hello to cool art magazines.

6) Asking questions about Kara Walker, rather than critique, in a further positive, hopeful effort.

And so what do I think sums up this week, its hopes, its hangovers?

Lobsters, obviously. Why? Ask the Surrealists, or read Signs of Spring.

Vaseline, Serra, and Barney

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Hello Sunday morning…and hello hangover. Looking for a fun distraction to keep you from thought of work tomorrow? Hey, me too.

That’s how I came across this clip of Matthew Barney filming his best known work, the Cremaster cycle. In it, we see Richard Serra, who is one of the actors in this piece, shoveling Vaseline and hear Barney talk about earlier artists’ work and physicality.

This video is one of many interesting clips on art21‘s YouTube channel. Art21, a part of PBS, is a non-profit that presents artists at work and in their own words. They have hundreds of great clips to check out, featuring artists from Kara Walker to Bruce Nauman to Sally Man. Even if a gore-smeared Barney directing is too much, you won’t be thinking about Monday morning.

Self Lubricating Plastic, Oh My

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On the left is The Deportment of the Host, a large installation, and on the right is a print entitled Drawing Restraint 9: Shimenawa. These seem very different in size, style, material, and theme, so that one might think all they had in common the room they are in.

These two works have in common 2 qualities: the artist, Matthew Barney, and a material, not immediately apparent, of self lubricating plastic. Matthew Barney is a contemporary American artist whose works spans performance, sculpture and video art, with a tendency toward cryptic personal stories and erotic themes. Quite a few of Barney’s works incorporate this material. In the print, it forms the frame around an image of Matthew Barney and Bjork. His use of this odd material certainly seems cryptic.

But to the point, what is self lubricating plastic, and why does Barney use it? It seems like a high tech product used to little effect, except perhaps the fondness of a biology major for cool technology. He tends to cast polycaprolactone thermoplastic and self lubricating plastic in his sculptural pieces like The Deportation of the Host. Using anything lubricating in regards to framing a print doesn’t make sense to me.

The plastic didn’t seem to be wet, although I was stopped from touching it. Any ideas?