Gordon Matta-Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark is a radical and emblematic figure in the history of art and architecture in the 1970s. Like many artists of his generation, he rejected the commodification of art, focusing instead on its social and performative dimensions as an artistic end in itself. The artist therefore embarks on monumental projects that he defines as Anarchitecture, combining anarchy and architecture. Gordon Matta-Clark creates sculptures using the urban landscape and its wasteland, which he cuts up, displaces and destroys. The surgical action of opening buildings, meticulously documented in photography and video, manifests a peculiar attraction for the void. These interventions reveal the limits of established structures, hidden behind cosmetic facades. His approach disrupts our relationship to space and matter, while suggesting complex symbolic interpretations.
Biography
Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) moved to New York after completing his studies in literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, and in architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, where he had an important encounter with the conceptual artist Robert Smithson. His creative and activist vision was then put into practice, enabling him to establish himself both in the public sphere and New York's alternative galleries. He left behind a body of work that has been recognized worldwide, notably in numerous retrospectives. Since then, the sculptor's work has been recognized worldwide, notably in numerous retrospectives. His work is also represented in major public collections, including New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp's Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst and Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum. Gordon Matta-Clark's archives are held at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
Recent exhibitions
| 2024 | Déliquescence, group exhibition, Fonderie Darling, Montréal David Zwirner: 30 Years, group exhibition, David Zwirner, LA |
| 2023 | Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L: Impossible Failures, duo exhibition, 52 Walker, NY Gordon Matta-Clark: Splitting, 1974, solo exhibition, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT Craft & Conceptual Art: Reshaping the Legacy of Artists’ Books, group exhibition, Center for Book Arts, NY Everything at Once: Postmodernity, 1967–1992, group exhibition, Bundeskunsthalle, Bonn, GER |
| 2022 | Gordon Matta-Clark: Walls Paper 1972, solo exhibition, MAMCO Geneva, CH Life Between Buildings, group exhibition , MoMA PS1, NY |