Matthew Barney / Jonathan Bepler

An operatic film about death and rebirth: RIVER OF FUNDAMENT, one of the most spectacular Gesamtkunstwerk in recent memory, comes to Hamburg.

Nobody in the field of contemporary art has expanded the understanding of sculpture as much as Matthew Barney. In his radical physical sculptural work he has created epic forms – as reflected in his five-part CREMASTER CYCLE, a gigantic Gesamtkunstwerk film project that combined references to pop culture, film, art, human anatomy and American industrial history. RIVER OF FUNDAMENT is an expansion of this work into a single, many-layered giant film installation. Barney translates the hypersexual narrative of Normal Mailer’s »Ancient Evenings,« a controversial novel about multiple rebirths, into present-day America and turns it into an allegory using three different types of American cars – a Chrysler, a Pontiac and, finally, a Ford. Against an epic backdrop of industrial and river scenery, the cars drive from Los Angeles to New York via Detroit. Barney began staging extravagant outdoor performances, that form the basis of the film, in these cities in 2007. To this, Barney has added landscape photography, chamber-play-like scenes – with stars of art, music and film like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Lawrence Weiner, Debbie Harry and Salman Rushdie – and Bepler’s symphonic music to create a unique, hypnotic artistic experience.

To download the film brochure, click here.