The Drawing Restraint series was a long-term project that Barney began in 1987 while still an undergraduate at Yale. The earliest in the series (Drawing Restraint 1-6, produced between 1987-89) brought together drawing, photography, and video performance in a way that reflected Barney's preoccupation with hypertrophy; that being the idea that athletic physicality and strength is built up through muscle resistance.

Drawing Restraint 2 was a gymnasium-based performance in which the artist made artistic "marks" on walls and ceiling while tethered to a ramp with bungee cords. Through this experiment, Barney had effectively confronted the time-honored maxim that the best art is a spontaneous, reflexive, activity. By applying the idea of hypertrophy to artistic growth - be that physical, cultural, or spiritual - he explored the concept that the "strongest" artists (like the strongest athletes) should have to overcome self-imposed obstacles in order to create something "higher"; something more "powerful". The resultant video recording, drawings, and "set" (featuring various items of gym apparatus) exist as an archive of the performance. Fellow artist Sophie Arkette observed that "These works do not refer to something static, a composed form, but reveal the way one action precipitates another in the course of making a work [...] What is crucial in the life of work is the attempt at doing something regardless of the outcome. In this sense, [Barney's] ethos is akin to that of experimental work of the 60s and 70s".

5:01 Minute Video - Museum of Modern Art, New York