Matthew Barney: Drawing Restraint 7 (1993)

Installation: three color video monitors, three laser-disc players, three laser discs, steel-and-polyethylene monitor bracket, and six fluorescent lights and fixtures, dimensions variable, central unit overall: c. 30" (76.2 cm) high x 44" (111.8 cm) diameter. One of an edition of three. Gift of Werner and Elaine Dannheisser

"The passage from one state to another, from one gender to the other, or to yet a third, intermediate one is an underlying theme of Barney's videos, including DRAWING RESTRAINT 7 (1993). Barney explicitly invokes ancient mythology, in which sexual metamorphoses frequently occur. During one half of the tape, a pair of satyrs on a empty stage grapple with each other, or with their own awkward bodies; during the other half, they struggle against each other and against the confinement of the limousine in which they are speeding across a city, over a bridge, and through a long tunnel, the latter in particular suggesting a birth-canal-like slippage from one reality to the next. Every gesture they make exudes entrapment, frustration, or erotic anticipation. Nearly identical in their two incarnations' the first hirsute, the second clean-shaven—these creatures remain oddly indeterminate, their genitals having been reduced to androgynous lumps, despite the obvious maleness of their heads and torsos. Like Barney's work generally, DRAWING RESTRAINT 7 is a meticulously staged exercise in contradiction, without respite or resolution." (On the Edge: Contemporary Works from the Werner and Elaine Dannheisser Collection, 1997)