Matthew Barney/Dream Logic

 October 21



"Objects and narrative acting together"..I remember going to see the Cremaster Exhibition at the Guggenheim, and  being floored by the artistry involved with the "props", although that is clearly not the right word.  The peices ranged from blue Astroturf to plastics and resins in drip formations, these items relating to each other with a sort of "dream logic", as was described by another onlooker. 


Barney's epic Cremaster Cycle (1994-2002) was a project consisting of five feature-length films that explore processes of creation.  Barney's vision encompasses a wide variety of media, including video and performance. His influences include Jack Smith, Norman Mailer, and Bruce Nauman.

I share with Barney the compulsion to eradicate gender, or even identity as a human.  A character that is not a being. 

So what does that make it, a prop?  I am talking in current work about the felcan traverses a world of animate and inanimate representations.  Through this, systems of presence can be devised.  There appears to be a tendency to pair the non-being character in a world that is not our own.  Then there are artists who created monsters, demons, fictitious characters, used animals, ....never personification of animals until recent times.  Makes me think about how Disney characters are as much like humans as they could possibly be before becoming human. 

All of this speaks enticingly to that dream logic.  The trick is to humanize it.   (Thank you, Archie)



Felcan update:


completed Spring this weekend, despite many obstacles. Pic Forthcoming...