Sadie Coles HQ is pleased to announce their first exhibition with acclaimed artist Matthew Barney. Since the early nineties his work has spanned all media - film, sculpture, photography, drawing, and performance – in order to capture the meticulous vision of his masterworks. This exhibition, his first commercial show in London, will consist of three sculptures and a photograph related to his recent project DRAWING RESTRAINT 9.
DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 is the most complex installment in an ongoing series is to explore “resistance as a pre-requisite for development and a vehicle for creativity.” The feature film DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 features Barney and musician Björk, who also scored the film, as Occidental Guests aboard a whaling vessel in the Sea of Japan who’s seemingly predestined meeting results in an unconventional romance. Throughout the work, Barney addresses various themes surrounding the history and culture of Japan including the Shinto religion, the tea ceremony, the history of whaling, and the sub-plantation of blubber with refined petroleum for oil.
The three sculptures featured in this exhibition are each a portrait of the film’s main protagonists: the male and female characters and the whaling ship, whose subsequent transformations power the film’s action. Barney creates sculptures recalling the architecture of the vessel and the physical transformations that take place, reflecting on the relationship between the Japanese Hosts and the titular Occidental Guests.
