“DE LAMA LÂMINA” (2004-2009), BY MATTHEW BARNEY, IS ONE OF THE NEW PERMANENT INSTALLATIONS INAUGURATING IN INHOTIM

“De Lama Lâmina” (2004-2008) may be considered the latest achievement of a project that began in the performance with the musician Arto Lindsay, during the 2004 Carnival in Salvador, Brazil, and documented in the homonym long film, already part of the Inhotim collection and shown since 2008. By taking the candomblé from Bahia as a source of reference, Matthew Barney weaves in this project a complex narrative on the conflict between Ogum, orisha of the iron, the war, and technology, and Ossanha, orisha of the forests, the plants, and the forces of nature.

A site-specific creation, “De Lama Lâmina” (2004-2008) is the first permanent installation developed by Matthew Barney for a museological institution. The artist has chosen to place the work amidst a eucalyptus forest, viewing the displacement experience as part of the project. After walking a winding path to reach the work, the visitor faces a seemingly unfinished scenario: two geodesic domes of steel and glass, attached to each other, amidst iron ore hills and fallen trees. Inside, space is taken by a huge tractor that lifts a resin tree. Used in the shooting and in the performance, the tractor is here transformed into a big sculpture. Tension is generated by bringing together opposite poles that constitute the work’s organizing principle, evoking the dualism between creation and destruction, fertility and death.

Since the early 1990s, Matthew Barney has developed a body of work in the most diverse media – drawing, sculpture, film, photograph, installation, performance, and video – that reflect a stunning and particular aesthetics. With his cycle Cremaster (1994–2002), the artist expanded the established boundaries for the video-art genre, applying narrative resources and fictional characters to create a unique mythology.

Matthew Barney (San Francisco, United States, 1967; lives and works in New York) has had solo exhibitions in several institutions, including the Fondazione Merz, in Turin (2008), the Kunsthalle Vienna (2008) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2006). In 2003, the New York Guggenheim Museum made a great retrospective of his work, also presented at Museum Ludwig, in Cologne, Germany, and at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Barney also participated in some of the most important international art exhibitions, such as the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003) and the IX Documenta (1992).