DRAWING RESTRAINT 28

Black and white video Mathew Barney early work

A video installation in which Satyrs grapple in a limousine as it drives through the tunnels of New York City. While one satyr chases its tail in the front seat, another attempts to make a drawing in the condensation-coated sunroof of the limousine using the third satyr's horn.

The film concerns the theme of self-imposed limitation and continues Matthew Barney's interest in religious rite, this time focusing on Shinto.

American WWII soldiers open a mold, exposing a solid architectural structure made entirely of petroleum jelly. The soldiers violently soften the structure with shovels. The wall of a large metal box slams down revealing Douglas MacArthur (played by Matthew Barney) smoking a large corncob pipe. MacArthur wades through the petroleum jelly morass to a Japanese general wearing a top hat. Both generals sign several white plastic tablets with inkless tattoo guns. Over a bunsen burner, Barney heats up a branding iron bearing his insignia and presses it into each white tablet. After each tablet has been signed and branded, Barbara Gladstone, who attends in period attire, ceremonially places a sticker label bearing the work’s name, date, and Gladstone Gallery logo on each tablet.

The latest installment in the monumental Drawing Restraint series, which merges sculpture, athleticism and cryptic symbolism into a stunning meditation on art-making and physical exertion.

Presented as part of the exhibition "RIVER OF FUNDAMENT", Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Executed, filmed and presented in Gladstone’s 21st Street gallery, the work is performed as a duet between dancer Raphael Xavier (SECONDARY’s Jack Tatum) and Barney (as quarterback Ken Stabler). Half performance and half presentation of trace, the work charts the repeated physical and psychological damage sustained by both players in endless replay. While Tatum’s mark-making on the gallery walls is the result of a series of running drills conducted while he impacts a cast clay weight, other gestures belie something more ominous. One of the first NFL players to be diagnosed with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, Stabler leaves his imprint with a metal barbell and clay weight attached to his skull.