Movers and Shakers: The 40 Most Exciting Soulful Artists of 2003

Article Tools

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Matthew Barney delirious dreamer Two Goodyear blimps hover over a football field; inside them, stewardesses in model-perfect makeup and 1930s uniforms yawn and preen while another stylish woman, hiding under a table, pulls grapes through a hole she?s made in its surface. Some grapes fall to the floor and form a geometrical pattern?which is immediately repeated on the football field by a corps of chorus girls. In another film, this one a bizarre biopic, murderer Gary Gilmore?s parents appear as tightly corseted creatures, half-human half-bees (the symbol of Gilmore?s native Utah is the beehive), and his execution is staged as a rodeo.
These images from 35-year-old sculptor and filmmaker Matthew Barney perfectly capture the movement of dreams. But his dreams aren?t just personal; his recently completed five-film Cremaster series (named for the muscle that pulls the testicles upward in response to cold or fright) teems with sideways allusions to contemporary concerns: genetic engineering, the cult of celebrity, and the many questions surrounding maleness in modern culture. His sleek, professional-quality film work is typical of a new breed of avant-garde artists who have passed beyond the rough-edged, anti-storytelling aesthetic of earlier experimental film and video. Barney, whom curator Richard Flood of Minneapolis? Walker Art Center calls ?increasingly, the dominant artist of our era,? had his first major show at 24 and has fascinated the art world ever since with his vast ambition and his air of personal glamour (he?s dating the rock star Bjork). All five Cremaster films will be on view for the first time in the United States?along with photos, drawings, and bizarre sculptural objects in plastic that repeat themes from the movies?at New York?s Guggenheim Museum beginning on February 14, 2003.
www.guggenheim.org/barney/
?Jon Spayde

Laura Love
Folk Funkster
A hip-deep groove, a strong voice, and a folk-funk sound bearing traces of African, Appalachian, Celtic, and Middle Eastern music are among Laura Love?s musical lures. The clincher is her live show, where she inevitably wows new listeners in venues ranging from women?s music festivals to honky-tonks. She?s that rare artist who can slip from sensitive folk to hip-hop without skipping a beat. Her cover song choices are equally broad, spanning Hank Williams, Laura Nyro, Nirvana, and Sly Stone.
Love, whose electric bass anchors her mostly acoustic band, is brassy enough to celebrate her ample form in ?Mahbootay,? sing the story of her pot bust, and boast about ?putting the ?yo!? back in back in yodel?(yes, she does yodel), but she?s also a down-to-earth type who took to the streets to protest the World Trade Organization and sponsors an environmental group that works to preserve a creek near her Seattle home. In and out of the spotlight, she?s making her voice heard loud and clear. Fourteen Days (Zoe Records)
?KEITH GOETZMAN

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print