Matthew Barney
27 Jan 2010 – 06 Mar 2010
69 South Audley St, London W1
In his second show with Sadie Coles HQ, Matthew Barney is presenting a group of new drawings relating to his project Ancient Evenings, an ongoing performance in seven acts in collaboration with composer Jonathan Bepler. Based on Norman Mailer’s symbolic and erotically charged novel of 1983 reimagining ancient Egyptian mythology and ritual, the operatic performance piece is structured according to the seven stages the soul passes through after death – Ren, Khu, Sekhem, Ba, Ka, Khaibit and Sekhu. It transposes the central myth of Isis and Osiris into a contemporary industrialised dystopia: the opening instalment in 2008 supplanted the entombed body for the battered Chrysler that also figured prominently in Barney’s film Cremaster 3 (2002).
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