Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo Presents Exhibition of Matta-Clark
SAO PAULO.- After its opening at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes do Chile, it is the turn of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo to receive the Gordon Matta-Clark: Undoing Space exhibit, the first comprehensive retrospective of the provocative, irreverent artist to travel through South America. The opening at MAM is scheduled for February 11 (Thursday) from 8 pm, closing on April 4th. The exhibit is organized by the Museo de Arte de Lima in collaboration with the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and supported by the David Zwirner Gallery, New York, featuring the work and life of the son of surrealist artist Roberto Matta, who is still almost unkown by the continent’s public.
Gordon Matta-Clark, "Splitting", 1974
Just before the opening, at 6 pm, MAM presents a colloquium with the curators, Tatiana Cuevas and Gabriela Rangel; the artist’s widow, Jane Crawford; the critic and curator Lisette Lagnado; and Carmen Beuchat, dancer and close friend to the Matta-Clark couple. They will discuss the collective aspect of Gordon Matta-Clark’s work, from which it would be possible to think of an urban ethic which considers empty or derelict spaces as a path in the search for freadom.
Curated by Tatiana Cuevas – Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museo de Arte de Lima – and Gabriela Rangel – Director of Visual Arts and Curator at the Americas Society in New York –, the exhibition aims to introduce the work of Gordon Matta-Clark as a radical figure who brings together critical discourses of the European Neo-Avant-Garde and experimental art practices that emerged in New York between the 1970s and 1980s.
The exhibition proposes a reconstruction of the various layers encompassed in Matta-Clark’s approach to art-making as well as in his interest in the history of architecture and derelict urban spaces. Together with the photographic and filmic documentation of his iconic building “cuts” such as ‘A W-Hole House’ (1973), ‘Splitting’ (1974), ‘Bingo’ (1974), ‘Day’s End’ (1975), ‘Conical Intersect’ (1978), ‘Office Baroque’ (1977), and ‘Circus’ (1978), “Gordon Matta Clark: Undoing Space” reconsiders some of the artist’s social or political grounded actions such as ‘Garbage Wall’ (1970), the ‘Counter-Biennial’ (1971), ‘Fresh Air’ (1972), ‘Fake Estates’ (1973), the development of the concept and language of ‘Anarchitecture’ (1972-1974), or his late recorded performance at the Berlin Wall – ‘The Wall’ (1976) –, all in a broader context informed by the Cold War and the transformation of cities into real estate commodities.
This is the first time a group of photographs from the artist’s in-site 1971 intervention at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Chile will be shown. The exhibition will also present a selection of notebook sketches, drawings, and written statements, which go from proposals to potential sponsors to produce his works to more philosophical meditations on space and time.
“Gordon Matta Clark: Undoing Space” examines the artist’s critical response to the failure of modern architecture as a humanist endeavor and the collapse of affordable housing policies vis-à-vis his social concerns for creating sheltering (from self sustainable dwellings such as garbage walls, basket houses, balloon houses, among others) which still could find an echo within the urban changes and social demands of many South American countries.
The catalogue, edited by the Museo de Arte de Lima and published in bilingual editions Spanish/English and Portuguese/English, includes texts by Jane Crawford, Tatiana Cuevas, Lisette Lagnado, Justo Pastor Mellado, Gwendolyn Owens and Gabriela Rangel, as well as a selection of the artist’s writings and interviews.
Tatiana Cuevas (Mexico City. Lives in Lima) is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Museo de Arte de Lima – MALI. She has an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art in London and a BA in Art History from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. During 2005-2008 she was Associate Curator at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo in Mexico City. In 2004 she obtained the Hilla Rebay International Fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in New York. Recent exhibitions include: Henrik Håkansson. Novelas de la selva and Thomas Hirschhorn. Stand-alone, both presented at the Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo (2008); Mexico Cabinet. Supplements to a Collective Reverie, 7 Internationale Foto-Triennale Esslingen, Villa Merkel, Galerien der stadt Esslingen am Neckar, Alemania (2007); Jesús Rafael Soto. Visión en movimiento, Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo/Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires/Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea de Bergamo, Italy (2005-2006).
Gabriela Rangel M. (Caracas. Lives in New York) is Director of Visual Arts and Curator at the Americas Society in New York. She has an MA in Curatorial Studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and an MA in Media and Communications Studies from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in Caracas, where she also studied law. She holds a BA in Film from the International Film School at San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba. Prior to this position she was Assistant Curator of Latin American Art and Programs Coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has contributed to Parkett and Atlántica, and has written catalogue essays for Da Adversidade Vivemos:Contemporary Latin American Conceptual Artists (Musee de Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris), Liliana Porter (Centro de Arte Recoleta, Buenos Aires), Claudio Perna: Arte Social (Galería de Arte Nacional, Caracas) and Arte No es Vida (El Museo del Barrio). Recent exhibitions include Dias & Riedweg:…and it becomes something else (2009), ‘Emancipatory Action, Paula Trope and the Meninos’ (2006) and ‘So Far So Close’ (2005).
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