BASEL.- This year Schaulager is presenting Matthew Barney’s Drawing
Restraint project. Drawing Restraint is a series of performances,
numbering sixteen to date, in which Barney attempts to make graphic
marks despite self-imposed physical and psychological hindrances. In the
exhibition, works arising from Barney’s performances, such as
sculptures, vitrines, drawings and videos, will be juxtaposed with
artworks from the northern renaissance.
Schaulager’s supporting body, the Laurenz Foundation, has acquired
Matthew Barney’s archive of the performance series together with the
Museum of Modern Art, New York. Thanks to this joint acquisition the
Drawing Restraint Archive can now be shown to the public in its entirety
for the first time.
Born in 1967, Matthew Barney is one of the most versatile artists of
his generation, known above all for his ambitious film and performance
cycles Cremaster and Drawing Restraint. The Emanuel Hoffmann Foundation
has been buying his works since 1996 and today he is well-represented in
their collection, with a large group of works including films,
sculptures and drawings. In all their various manifestations, his works
are linked by the desire to lend inner states a binding form.
