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  4. 2010

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Past exhibitions: 2010

Matthew Barney

Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail
12 June – 3 October 2010

Matthew Barney’s (*1967) multi-part series Drawing Restraint is exhibited in juxtaposition with selected works of art from the Northern Renaissance in 2010.

Schaulager is showing the entire Drawing Restraint Archive for the first time in public. The archive is the point of departure for an exhibition with a significantly broader scope, including additional loans and artworks from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries: Matthew Barney’s works have been placed in dialogue with paintings, prints and drawings by Martin Schongauer, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Baldung Grien, Lucas Cranach the elder and many others.

Born in 1967, Matthew Barney is one of the most versatile artists of his generation. In all their various manifestations his works are linked by the desire to
lend inner states a binding form. Barney describes his multi-part series as “meditations on the creative process”.

Begun in 1988, Drawing Restraint is a series of performances, numbering sixteen to date. The initial conditions for the artistic actions involve Matthew Barney attempting to make graphic marks despite self-imposed physical and psychological hindrances. The precisely choreographed performances revolve around issues such as exertion, overcoming obstacles, rise and fall, and experimentation with the body and its limits. As the series has developed, the performances have become increasingly sophisticated and the narrative more allegorical. Every action has been documented on video or film.

The Drawing Restraint Archive includes sculptures, vitrines, videos and drawings – so called “secondary forms” which emphasise particular aspects of the actions. The objects are never incidental; they are carefully chosen, produced and arranged. The archive is being presented alongside four monumental sculptures by Matthew Barney. These are contrasted with selected northern renaissance paintings and works on paper containing Christian imagery.

The dialogue between the old masters and Matthew Barney’s works brings two traditions together, their iconography and belief systems separated by half a millennium. The intention is not, however, to draw parallels between religious and secular visual traditions. Rather, the arrangement is an attempt to bring out latent meaning in Matthew Barney’s work. The exhibition is exclusive to Schaulager and will not be touring. It includes two brand new works by Matthew Barney, shown for the first time in public: Drawing Restraint 17 and Drawing Restraint 18, both created in May 2010 at Schaulager.

Matthew Barney (born in San Francisco in 1967) gained international fame for his epochal Cremaster-Cycle (1994–2002). He began Drawing Restraint in 1988—un­d­erlying this performance series, which currently runs to 22 parts, is the idea that the creative act must overcome physical resistance. The six-hour film opera River of Fundament premiered in 2014. Impressive installations and drawings also attest to Barney’s status as one of our most significant contemporary artists.


Downloads

  • Exhibition Leaflet(pdf, 3.63 MB)
  • Exhibition Guide(pdf, 147.49 KB)

Catalogue

Written to accompany the exhibition held at Schaulager Basel in 2010, this book is the first complete record of Drawing Restraint, Matthew Barney’s performance project that started in 1987. It also introduces several of his large-scale sculptures with texts and numerous illustrations. In keeping with the artist’s ideas, Barney’s works are contrasted with selected northern Renaissance paintings and works on paper containing Christian imagery. It features illustrations and descriptions of all the exhibited works. Essays by the exhibition curator Neville Wakefield, New York, and Bodo Brinkmann, curator of old masters at the Kunstmuseum Basel, take us through the ideas behind the exhibi­tion. A far-reaching discussion between the British psychoanalyst and writer Adam Phillips and Matthew Barney gives insight into the array of subjects the artist is interested in. A large-format photospread illustrates the exhibition.


Matthew Barney
Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail
Exhibition catalogue

Includes texts by Neville Wakefield and Bodo Brinkmann, and a conversation between the artist and Adam Phillips

152 pages, 21 × 29.7 cm, 307 illustrations, softcover with dust jacket
The publication is available in English and German
1st edition 2010


Bookshop


Artist‘s book

Created by Matthew Barney, Drawing Restraint Volume VI is a chronological sequence of images narrating the dramatic contents of the film Drawing Restraint 17, a coproduction between the artist and Schaulager. The film was produced as part of the exhibition “Matthew Barney. Prayer Sheet with the Wound and the Nail,” staged at Schaulager Basel in 2010. The story is a contemporary allegory inspired by the painting “Death and the Woman” by the Renaissance artist Hans Baldung (known as Grien), in which a young woman travels from the Goetheanum in Dornach to Schaulager, where she ultimately meets her death. The conflict between obstruction and conquest set out in the Drawing Restraint series also underlies the film’s plot and its artistic interpretation. The sequence of images is choreographed by sheets of handmade Lama Li paper inserted into the book, some of which have been individually hand-torn. This natural variation makes each book unique.


Matthew Barney
Drawing Restraint Volume VI

Artist’s book, designed by Matthew Barney, Keith Riley and Jerry Kelly,

146 pages, 17.8 × 24.7 cm, 93 illustrations
Hardcover bound in Japanese cloth, with a debossed panel and full print on front cover
the spine is stamped in silver 2010, limited edition of 1000 copies
Special edition: 100 copies, signed by the artist


Bookshop

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