Matthew Barney has been called "the most important American artist of his generation" by The New York Times Magazine. His best-known body of work is The Cremaster Cycle, a series of five visually elaborate films that have become a tour de force on the international art scene.

The films are named after the muscle that lifts and lowers the testicles. In Barney's work, the term refers to the idea of gender undifferentiation, which characterizes a fetus's first seven weeks in the uterus before the sexual organs ascend to form a female or descend to form a male body.

Although each film is distinct, all explore Barney obsessions: sexually ambiguous genitalia, plus biology, mythology, athletics and aesthetics.

Eschewing convention, Barney created the five films out of sequence.

Cremaster 4 (1994), shot on the Isle of Man, features penile racing cars, androgynous fairies and a tap-dancing satyr (played by Barney himself).

Cremaster 1 (1995), set at a lit football stadium in Boise, Idaho (Barney's hometown), employs a troupe of smiling dancers (à la Busby Berkeley) whose moves are controlled by inexplicable beings in phallic blimps.

Cremaster 5 (1997), set in Budapest, is a mini opera that has the Queen (Ursula Andress, out of retirement for this) interacting with an androgynous acrobat, a dashing equestrian and a sea god ­ all three played by Barney.

Cremaster 2 (1999), shot in the Salt Flats of Utah and the Rocky Mountains of Alberta, conjures the personae of murderer Gary Gilmore (Barney) and magician Harry Houdini (Norman Mailer), rumored to have been Gilmore's grandfather.

Cremaster 3 (2002) narrates the construction of New York's Chrysler Building, during which the apprentice (Barney) is at odds with the building's architect, who, according to Masonic myth, was also the architect of Solomon's Temple.