Notebook Drawings: Gordon Matta-Clark

Drawing always played an outstanding role in the development of Gordon Matta-Clark's artistic work, as was already impressively underlined in the extensive Generali Foundation exhibition several years ago and the catalogue that accompanied that travelling exhibition.

Matta-Clark used drawing almost as a mirror for his thoughts, and his drawings were often the product of extremely intense, uninterrupted sessions during which whole series of works were created. Usually, these sessions are compiled in the artist's notebooks.

In these sessions, Matta-Clark worked on particular issues with great concentration. His notebooks thus reflect a great intensity and usually depict a new level of development in the thought and experimentation of this complex artist.

Thematically speaking, these works move from utopian visions to project-related planning and highly movement-oriented studies that approach choreographic sketches. 

The exhibition at Galerie Thomas Schulte focuses on five blocks of work from 1974 to 1978. In this period of time leading up to Matta-Clark's early death, his most important and best known large projects emerged, such as Splitting, Bingo, Conical Intersect and Circus-Carribean Orange.