Artistes

This weeks artists are weird as hell.

1. Matthew Barney.
I really wish I could see the full Cremaster cycle. Watching the trailer and seeing pictures of the sculptures and characters are completely unsatisfactory, and reading about it is just confusing. I watched a video of Barney talking about it and he really doesn't make much sense either. But from what I have been able to watch, Barney's work looks awesome. The characters and stories he creates are original and bizarre, and he combines inspiration drawn from so many things. While Barney considers himself primarily a sculptor, I must say the sculptures themselves don't excite me that much. Although I admit I'm pretty much awestruck at the exorbitant amounts of vaseline he uses.
http://www.cremaster.net/

2. Bill Viola
Again, I would like to see Viola's recent works. The stills from many of them look interesting, but I can only seem to find his old ones. The transitions in "Reflecting Pool" seem a bit disjointed, and I don't really like the narrative of the man jumping in and getting out- I think the video could do without and exist just for the sake of experimenting with video. I do like the reflections in the water when no one is there to cause them. While Viola is credited as a pioneer of video art, I would rather see his current work, which I'm sure is much improved with better technology and bigger budgets.
http://www.billviola.com/

3. Pipilotti Rist
Pipilotti Rist's videos were kind o boring to me. They all seemed very repetitive. Bill Viola's wotk was similar. With both, I felt like I was missing something and should watch the videos over because there was sure to be something in them, but it was like rereading the Dew Breaker. I wasn't interested enough the first time to spend the time watching them again. Also, she is another artist much of whose work sounds very interesting, so I would like to see some more of it. Her website is pretty fun
http://www.pipilottirist.net/begin/open.html