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About
Gordon Matta-Clark, born in 1943 in New York, died in 1978 at the same place, was a conceptual artist best known for his so-called “building cuts” from the 1970s; a series of site-specific projects, involving the dissection of abandoned buildings. Matta-Clark received formal training as an architect at Cornell University from 1962 to 1968, including a year at the Sorbonne in Paris, where he studied French literature and met Guy Debord and the Situationist International. Matta-Clark never practiced architecture, but instead devised a theory of “anarchitecture,” an alternative use of buildings. The film and photographic material from his “building cuts” projects is combined with the experimental roughness of the architectural cuts, constituting a denunciation of the function of conventional architecture.
Throughout his lifetime the artist received numerous grants and awards including the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1977) and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Theodoron (1975). Important solo exhibitions include the Paris Biennale (1975), the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (1977; 1978; 1985), the Stedelijk Museum (1986), the Museo Reina Sofía (1997; 2006), the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (2021), and MAMCO Geneva (2022). Notable group exhibitions include MoMA (1971), Documenta (1972; 1977), MoMA P.S.1 (1976; 2015), Moderna Museet, SFMOMA (1993; 1999), Hamburger Kunsthalle (2000), Tate Modern (2005), the Musée National d’Art Modern in Paris (2005), the Art Institute of Chicago (2016). His work is included in the public collections of the Canadian Center for Architecture, MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, SFMOMA, Stedelijk Museum, and Sammlung Verbund, Vienna.
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Works
Gordon Matta-Clark
Walls, 1972Gelatin silver printImage size:
38.1 x 52.7 cm | 15 x 20 3/4 in
Framed dimensions:
55.9 x 71.1 x 3.8 cm | 22 x 28 x 1 1/2 inIn Walls (1972), Matta-Clark created a series of photographs in the Bronx capturing the interior spaces left exposed through demolition on the exterior of the adjacent architecture. Flattening the perspective...In Walls
(1972), Matta-Clark created a series of photographs in the Bronx capturing
the interior spaces left exposed through demolition on the exterior of the adjacent
architecture. Flattening the perspective of these surfaces of exposed brick and
peeling paint, the artist abstracted the forms of the city, revealing a visual
rhythm and poetry while simultaneously exposing the neglect of these
neighborhoods. The close-up images show the tender intimacy of his work in and
on interiors, while the wide shots reveal the artist's layered and splitting
vision of the city that would continue to reveal itself even more expressly in
his later work. In a successive exhibition at 112 Greene Street, the downtown
artist space Matta-Clark co-founded, the artist printed Walls images on sheets
of newspaper and hung them on the gallery walls, transforming the photographs
of crumbling walls into an abstracted pattern in bright primary and secondary
colors and titling the strips Wallspaper Sheets (1972). He
simultaneously created an artist book, recoloring the black and white source
photographs in yellow, green, blue, red, purple, and orange inks, and printing
the images on thin pages split down the middle, so the viewer continuously
rearranges which segments of walls go together, mixing and matching the
fragments. The cover provides a wider view of the source photographs: four
images from a contact sheet, "cut" in the camera, revealing the
serial sectioning of the housing blocks.Selected WorksInquire about works by Gordon Matta-ClarkExhibitions in the gallery-
(Ex)Urban Futures of the Recent Past, curated by David Hartt
Gordon Matta-Clark 18 January TO 1 March 2025 POTSDAMER STRASSEGalerie Thomas Schulte presents (Ex)Urban Futures of the Recent Past, an exhibition of films and...View Exhibition -
SHELTER IN PLACE
GROUP SHOW 8 June TO 13 July 2020 CHARLOTTENSTRASSEGalerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to announce the online film exhibition Shelter in Place ,...View Exhibition -
THE NOTION OF MUTABLE SPACE
GORDON MATTA-CLARK 9 September TO 4 November 2017 CHARLOTTENSTRASSEThe Notion of Mutable Space is both a fundamental element and a postulation in Gordon...View Exhibition -
1991... (Memorial Promenade)
GROUP EXHIBITION 9 July TO 27 August 2011 CHARLOTTENSTRASSEOn the occasion of its 20th anniversary, Galerie Thomas Schulte is pleased to present the...View Exhibition -
OFFICE BAROQUE
GORDON MATTA-CLARK 11 June TO 31 July 2010 CHARLOTTENSTRASSECoinciding with this year’s second Gallery Weekend Berlin, Galerie Thomas Schulte will be hosting an...View Exhibition -
Notebook Drawings
Gordon Matta-Clark 29 September TO 10 November 2007 CHARLOTTENSTRASSEDrawing always played an outstanding role in the development of Gordon Matta-Clark's artistic work, as...View Exhibition
Artist News-
Gordon Matta-Clark / Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach, Brussels, Belgium
Solo Exhibition 20 September to 21 December 2024Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach presents Gordon Matta-Clark , the first major solo exhibition of the renowned American artist in Belgium in over thirty years....Read more -
Gordon Matta-Clark / Satellite Tribeca, New York, USA
ARTS PANEL with FILM AND LIVE BALLET 18 May 2024The New York of Gordon Matta-Clark: Alive in the City Today This intimate panel discussion will focus on creative collaborations between the Estate of Gordon...Read more -
Gordon Matta-Clark / Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria
Solo Exhibition 13 November 2021 to 6 March 2022In his radical, socially critical, and innovative work, Gordon Matta-Clark was one of the most significant figures from the New York art scene of the...Read more
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