Gordon Matta-Clark
Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Splitting (1974), documentation
‘Undoing Space’ is the first major survey of Gordon Matta-Clark’s work in South America. The exhibition’s press release describes Matta-Clark as ‘an artist of mythical stature little known to wider audiences in South America’ – something that this comprehensive overview of his work attempts to change. The exhibition includes work he made in New York, Paris, Milan, Genoa, Antwerp, New Jersey and Chicago, with special attention to a project made in Santiago in 1971. Curated by Tatiana Cuevas and Gabriela Rangel, the show will travel to three major institutions in the region: Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; and Museo de Arte de Lima.
Splitting (1974)
‘Undoing Space’ includes not only documentation of Matta-Clark’s well-known building cuts – such as Splitting (1974), Day’s End (1975), Conical Intersect (1975) and Office Baroque (1977) – but also examples of his social or performance-based projects and his more speculative, unrealized projects. The curators position the artist, who died in 1978, as a socially and politically engaged artist whose work is of contemporary relevance to people in megacities such as São Paulo, caught in the midst of rapid development with consequent infrastructure issues related to housing, water supply, transport and resources. Matta-Clark’s use of derelict buildings and discarded objects are presented as evidence of his social critique of Modernist architecture and short-sighted urban planning practices. His building cuts suggest alternate ways of inhabiting space and the exhibition includes his propositions for low-cost housing including Flag Pole Housing (1974), Garbage Wall (1970) and Sky Hook (Study for a Balloon Building) (1978). His critique of urban planning and real-estate speculation is most directly addressed in the Fake Estates project in New York (1973–4).
The artist’s political engagement is demonstrated by the open letter that he sent to encourage artists to boycott the São Paulo Biennial in 1971 in response to Brazil’s military dictatorship at the time. Also included is a new video containing historical documentation of Matta-Clark’s 1976 Untitled (Made in America) intervention of graffiti and large advertising posters on the Berlin Wall.
A notable aspect of ‘Undoing Space’ is the emphasis placed on the artist’s ‘cultural, emotional and family ties’ with South America – especially Chile. Matta-Clark’s father, the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta, was separated from his mother, American artist Anne Clark, when Gordon was a young boy. In 1971 both father and son visited the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Santiago. The exhibition retells a story of how Matta-Clark travelled to Santiago to find his father, but that he arrived at the museum after Matta had already left. The then director of the museum, Nemesio Antúnez, invited him to make an architectural intervention and vestiges of this work, the Bellas Artes Intervention (also referred to as Bellas Artes Cutting, 1971), were re-discovered when ‘Undoing Space’ was installed there in November 2009. Chilean artist Frederico Assler, who was installing his own exhibition at the museum, told Matta-Clark’s widow, Jane Crawford, that he had met Matta-Clark in 1971 and showed her where the work was located. The Bellas Artes Intervention is therefore one of Matta-Clark’s first building cuts and one of the few that has escaped demolition. According to Crawford, it would be possible to restore the work by removing some wooden panels and reinstating some mirrors in their original position. ‘Undoing Space’ includes photographs that Matta-Clark made to document the work, which are exhibited here publicly for the first time. Unfortunately this photographic documentation is difficult to decipher and, in the absence of any sketches, it would have been interesting if the curators had found ways to provide more information on this little-known work. Hopefully this will be addressed in the forthcoming publication and at subsequent exhibition venues.
An undeniable local point of reference is the work of Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. Like Matta-Clark, Oiticica’s work exists to a large extent in fragmentary documentation, now more so than ever after a tragic fire destroyed many of his remaining works in Rio de Janeiro last year. In a moment of serendipitous programming a major survey of Oiticica’s work at the Itaú Cultural Centre in São Paulo coincides with the Matta-Clark exhibition at MAM-SP, bringing the two artists into a posthumous dialogue.
Sarah Farrar
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