Opening Friday, November 21, 7pm

Redoubt (2018) is a major work by American artist Matthew Barney, filmed in the winter landscape of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains. Blending classical mythology with the contemporary American West, the film loosely follows the myth of Diana, goddess of the hunt, reimagined as a modern-day marksman, accompanied by her attendants, and accidentally trespassed upon by Actaeon, who is subsequently punished.The film, structured around six hunts, has no dialogue. Instead, its narrative is conveyed through an expressive soundtrack, orchestrated and performed by Joathan Bepler, and choreography that mirrors and interprets the protagonists’ encounters in the wild.

Diana (played by Anette Wachter, a true world champion sharpshooter) hunts first a stag, then the elusive wolf. She is discovered by the Engraver, a Forest Service ranger (played by Barney himself), who documents his discoveries by etching detailed drawings into copper plates set up in the snowy landscape. He brings these to the trailer of the Electroplater (played by dancer K.J. Holmes, who also contributed to the film’s choreography), who transforms their surface through the electrochemical process. Towards the end of the film, the Engraver ventures into town, where we encounter the Hoop Dancer (played by Sandra Lamouche of the Bigstone Cree Nation) performing inside an American Legion. While the mythological Actaeon is ultimately punished by being transformed into a stag that is then killed by his own hunting dogs, Redoubt culminates in a different and surprising turn of events, where the hunted exact punishment on the creations they inspired.

Redoubt was inspired by Barney’s youth, spent in Idaho, and the controversy surrounding the reintroduction of the wolves in the west.The opening of Redoubt at Tinworks at Rialto coincides with the 30th anniversary of the return of gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park, one of the most significant conservation efforts in modern American history. Engaging the still polarizing topic of wolves in the west, Barney describes Redoubt as “an American narrative, a portrait of a region.” It is a breathtakingly beautiful work that layers myth, landscape, and movement in a dialogue between the natural world—and specifically the region of the mountain west—and the human impulse to interpret it.

Redoubt will open at 7pm, Friday November 21.

Daily screenings take place at 12:00 PM and 2:15 PM. The film runs 134 minutes, and visitors are welcome to experience it in full or to enter and exit as they choose.

Matthew Barney. Photo by Ari Marcopoulos.

Matthew Barney is an American artist renowned for provocative explorations of the body and ritual across sculpture, installation, film, performance, and drawing. Since the early 1990s, Barney’s epic projects have addressed the complex spectacle of violence in American culture, merging references to classical mythology, modern history, sports, human anatomy, and popular culture. His films and ritualistic performances feature elaborate costumes, objects often coated in viscous substances, and sets evoking military training camps, sports arenas, or medical facilities. Barney is perhaps best known for The CREMASTER Cycle (1994–2002), a series of five feature-length films and related sculptures and drawings that blend references to the human reproductive cycle with mythology and contemporary subculture. His most recent major bodies of work, SECONDARY (2023) and Redoubt (2018), respectively explore the physical brutality of American sports culture and the nation’s myths surrounding landscape. Barney has presented large-scale solo projects at Fondation Cartier, Paris (2024); Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (2019); and Haus Der Kunst, Munich (2014); among other institutions. He is an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters as well as a recipient of the 1996 Hugo Boss Prize and the Aperto Prize at the 45th Venice Biennale, among other accolades.