Matthew Barney is an American contemporary artist. Born in 1967 in San Francisco, Barney graduated from Yale University and has since been creating work that fuses sculptural installations with performance and video art. Having played sports throughout all his youth, his vision is premised by the precision of physical effort and movement, as well as its erotic undertones so as to investigate the limits of the body and sexuality through different ritualistic performances. Barney is best known for his Cremaster series (1994-2002), a cycle of five visually extravagant films whose central focus is the male cremaster muscle, transfered into an alternate metaphorical world of symbols and mythology. His controversial work has been displayed at various international exhibitions, such as Documenta in Germany in 1992, the 1993 and 1995 biennial exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Aperto ’93 at the 48th Venice Biennale, for which he was awarded the Europa 2000 Prize. Barney has been distinguished with several other prestigious awards, such as the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize in 1996 and the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award at the 54th San Francisco International Film Festival in 2011.