Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint

Matthew Barney, an athlete-turned-visual artist, has brought his 18-year-long project series "Drawing Restraint" to Seoul.

After a world tour in the United States and Europe with a five-film series "Cremaster Cycle," (1994-2002) Barney is now displaying his initial works from his earlier days as well as his latest works at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.

From a football player in high school to an art and medicine major at Yale University, he expanded his perimeter to art. Barney, who is also pop artist Bjork`s partner, has drawn much attention in contemporary art circles since his first debut in 1991 in New York. He received the first Guggenheim Museum`s Hugo Boss Award in 1996 at the age of 28. Barney has constantly questioned the limits of the physical body, the creativity coming out of it and the differentiation between males and females.

The first six works in the Drawing Restraint, from 1987-1989, were created with his body intentionally put under physical restraints. Strapped with a band, the artist tried to draw running up an incline, inspired by his previous knowledge of the human body and his experience as an athlete.

"The concept is hypertrophy. Muscles under resistances in the form of work, they break down into pieces but soon get healed and become larger muscles," said Barney at a meeting with local press last week.

One of his works, "The Path" (1991), shows three concepts that lay the ground for the whole series of Drawing Restraint. "Situation, Condition and Production" endlessly repeats the cycle of sexual energy.

As he proceeded with the Drawing Restraint project in the middle of the Cremaster Cycle project, he was able to go back to where he started his art career. After he completed Cremaster Cycle, Barney abandoned self-imposed restraints to express eroticism and the deconstruction of the body.

In Drawing Restraint 9, Barney chose a Japanese whaling ship to film the love story of a man (Barney) and a woman (Bjork) and used the site as a driving force for the narrative. With eccentric and unique music composed by Bjork, the film constantly shows the shape of Barney`s oval-shaped "Field Emblem," intersected by a horizontal bar. The horizontal bar of the emblem, which is the symbol of restraint, is temporarily removed in the film, basically giving the concept of "restraint as a source of creativity."

The two guests, after having a tea ceremony, are surrounded by floods with liquid petroleum jelly in the tatami room and start to cut each other`s leg with huge knives. Then, the two embrace each other and breathe through a blowhole on the back of their necks. This scene is seemingly a procedure through which the two land mammals transform into sea mammals, in other words, whales.

Toward the end of the Drawing Restraint project, Barney`s work has evolved into narrative and more character-based.

"Since Drawing Restraint 7 was made in 1993, I was focusing more on the narrative issue or theatrical conditions of restraint than physical conditions in Drawing Restraint 1 and 2," said Barney.

In Drawing Restraint 11 and 12, Barney executed rock climbing performances on exhibition gallery walls in Japan and Korea, using small grips and ropes.

Barney`s exhibition also celebrates the first anniversary of Leeum, which is located in Hannam-dong. The exhibition runs through Jan. 8, 2006. Docents are available everyday except Monday. Daily tours start at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. A one-week advance reservation is required for English tours. Admission for adults is 7,000 won and for children, 4,000 won. Reservations should be made in advance. For reservations, call (02) 2014-6901 or visit www.leeum.org

(yoonmi@heraldm.com)

By Kim Yoon-mi