Matthew Barney

Fumes

In Fumes, Ari Marcopoulos takes an in-depth look into the studio process of American artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney. Shot over four years, Fumes depicts the activity within Barney’s Long Island City studio from 2011 to 2014. Marcopoulos avidly documented the day-to-day activity in the workspace, from the digging of an Egyptian death chamber, to the flooding during Hurricane Irene, to the ongoing preparation for Barney’s 2014 film epic River of Fundament. The publication is comprised of black and white and full-color spreads showing workers transporting, molding, and fusing toxic materials—interwoven with an array of intricate pictorial montages.