Global contemporary art events and news observed from New York City. Suggestion? Email us.

Matthew Barney and Gaspar Noé in Conversation for BOMB Magazine

Thursday, April 3rd, 2014

Matthew Barney is in the Spring issue of BOMB Magazine, speaking with Director Gaspar Noé about the pair’s shared love of Kubrick, comparisons between past work and their latest projects, and their interests in realism versus spontaneity.   “The aspect of filmmaking that I’m most interested in has to do with creating a live condition,” Barney says, “where something is actually happening in real time, and then filming in response to that… It’s not a very economical way of making a film—to set those situations up and shoot them in real time and then edit it all down.” (more…)

New York – The World Premiere of Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler’s “River of Fundament” at BAM

Sunday, March 2nd, 2014


Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning

Matthew Barney’s newest film, River of Fundament, is a spectacle, to say the least.  Clocking in at just under 6-hours, the film is in turns a surreal voyage through the Egyptian afterlife, the American automotive industry, and the respective encounters of Barney and composer Jonathan Bepler’s with their various subjects, all turned inwards on the film’s own internal logic and unleashed in jarring blasts of viscera, atonal operatics and monumental, ritualistic performance happenings taking part in Detroit, Los Angeles and New York.


Matthew Barney, River of Fundament (still) (2014), Courtesy BAM credit: Hugo Glendinning (more…)

Matthew Barney’s “River of Fundament” to Premiere at BAM in mid-February

Saturday, January 18th, 2014

Matthew Barney’s latest filmic project, the nearly 6-hour long epic River of Fundament is set to premiere next month at Brooklyn Academy of Music.  Created in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler,  the work takes its inspiration from Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, paralleling Mailer’s tale of Egyptian mythology with the rise and fall of the American auto industry.   (more…)