Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint

About

Matthew Barney (born 1967, San Francisco) is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation. His practice encompasses a diverse array of media including drawing, sculpture, photography, performance, film and installation, which are presented in exhibitions that are conceived by the artist as a gesamtkunstwerk or total work. Barney's exhibition at the Serpentine presents works from his Drawing Restraint series, which he began in 1987 while still in art school. Inspired by the idea of resistance training, he applied restraints to his body while drawing, exhibiting the resulting drawings, props and video documentation of the performances in the spaces where the actions had taken place. The Drawing Restraint series investigates the relationship between resistance and creativity and artistic and athletic bodies working at the threshold of physical limitations.