Matthew Barney was born in San Francisco in 1967 and grew up in Idaho. In high school, he played football and at Yale University, studied art. In 1991, upon graduation, he made his New York debut. Since then, he has continued to create a unique body of work that combines installation, performance, and film.

Barney¡¯s inimitable artistic vision foregrounds the physical rigors of sport and its erotic undercurrents to explore the limits of the body and sexuality. Barney is best known as the creator of the CREMASTER Cycle, a series of five visually extravagant works created out of sequence. The films are a grand mixture of history, autobiography, and mythology, an intensely private universe in which symbols and images are densely layered and interconnected. The resulting cosmology is both beautiful and complex.

Matthew Barney won the prestigious Europa 2000 prize at the 45th Venice Biennale in 1993. He was also the first recipient of the Guggenheim Museum¡¯s Hugo Boss Award. Matthew Barney lives and works in New York City.