Drawing Restraint 7
Having begun (with Drawing Restraint 1-6) to experiment with video installation, Drawing Restraint 7 marked a transitional moment in a series Barney and through video installation he was able to make "stories rather than documenting real actions". Despite its formal differences, however, Drawing Restraint 7 continued to explore the concept of creative growth by overcoming external and self-imposed restrictions. Drawing Restraint 7 also deals with one of Barney's other preoccupations, namely Western culture's obsession with the idea of masculinity as a performance that sates from ancient Greece to the present. In the video, actors wearing heavy make-up, cumbersome prosthetics, and costumes, play the roles of satyrs engaged in seemingly futile physical activities, such as chasing their own tails or attempting to draw while wrestling in the confined space of the backseat of a limousine.
As Barney moved forward with the series (reaching Drawing Restraint 19 in 2013), he continued to place the body in a central role. Describing the series as a whole as "an endless loop between desire and discipline", the work explores the ritualistic processes of creation through a range of materials, settings, and characters. Art critic Quinn Latimer said of the Drawing Restraint series that by "delineating evermore elaborate contests of physical strength and psychological willpower against resistance at turns physical, sexual, architectural, cultural, oceanic or spiritual, the series resembles the endless tragicomic trials of a Greek demigod, or its most contemporary incarnation, the athlete [..."> the body and its tribulations are central to his practice [and"> his thoroughly Postmodern work furthers one of the oldest art-historical traditions: figuration".
Three-channel video, video monitors, steel, and internally lubricated plastic, and fluorescent light fixtures - Museum of Modern Art, New York
