Visiting Artist Lecture Series—Visual Arts MFA—Columbia University
Visiting Artist Lecture Series—Visual Arts MFA—Columbia University

Tuesday November 10th: Matthew Barney

Matthew-Barney-her-giant

Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in 1967 and raised in Boise, Idaho. He attended Yale University, receiving his BA in 1989, then moved to New York City, where he lives today. From his earliest work, Barney has explored the transcendence of physical limitations in a multimedia art practice that incorporates feature-length films, video installations, sculpture, photography, and drawing.

In 2002 Barney completed the CREMASTER Cycle, a five-part film begun in 1994. The Cycle, along with related sculptures, photographs, and drawings, was the subject of a 2002 retrospective organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and traveling to Museum Ludwig, Cologne and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. His ongoing series DRAWING RESTRAINT has been the subject of exhibitions at the Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Serpentine Gallery, London; Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul; and 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. Barney’s most recent project is RIVER OF FUNDAMENT, an operatic film made with composer Jonathan Bepler. A solo exhibition of related sculptures, drawings and storyboards, opened at Haus der Kunst Munich, 2014; traveled to the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Tasmania in November of that year; and is now on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through January of next year.

Barney has received numerous awards including the Aperto prize at the 1993 Venice Biennale; the Hugo Boss Award in 1996; the 2007 Kaiser Ring Award in Goslar, Germany and the San Francisco International Film Festival’s Persistence of Vision Award in 2011.