Matthew Barney. The Cremaster Cycle

Nancy Spector, Neville Wakefield

Matthew Barney's Cremaster cycle (1994–2002) is a self-enclosed aesthetic system consisting of five films that explore processes of creation. The cycle unfolds not just cinematically, but also through the photographs, drawings, sculptures, and installations the artist produced in conjunction with each episode. Its conceptual departure point is the male cremaster muscle, that covers the testis. Its function is to raise and lower the scrotum in order to regulate the temperature of the testis and promote spermatogenesis.

The project is filled with anatomical allusions to the position of the reproductive organs during the embryonic process of sexual differentiation: Cremaster 1 represents the most "ascended" or undifferentiated state, Cremaster 5 the most "descended" or differentiated.

The cycle repeatedly returns to those moments during early sexual development in which the outcome of the process is still unknown—in Barney's metaphoric universe, these moments represent a condition of pure potentiality. As the cycle evolved over eight years, Barney looked beyond biology as a way to explore the creation of form, employing narrative models from other realms, such as biography, mythology, and geology.