The Cremaster Cycle: A Conversation with Matthew Barney (2004)

For his five Cremaster films Matthew Barney's created a multitude of sculptural forms and structures. Recently both the sculptures and the films traveled to museums in Cologne, Paris and New York's Guggenheim. In THE CREMASTER CYCLE: A Conversation with Matthew Barney, the artist guides the camera through this remarkable creation at the Guggenheim Museum while being questioned by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of the New York Times, who has called Barney "the most important artist of his generation". The ramps of Frank Lloyd Wright's museum are filled with Barney's sculptures complemented by plasma screens showing the Cremaster films. The sculptures - constructed from the artist's signature materials, including plastic, metal, and Vaseline - are three-dimensional incarnations of the characters and settings. They exist independently from the films, but embody the same content, now expressed in space rather than time. This documentary provides insight into Matthew Barney's work and his mythic Cremaster Cycle.