Gordon Matta-Clark, 1969-1978 Reshaping Structure through Drawing

Gordon Matta-Clark (New York, 1943-1978), the son of Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta, became famous through his “Cuttings” (building transformations by means of cuts or the extraction of fragments) and produced a substantial body of drawings in his brief but intense career.

The exhibition on Matta-Clark held at MACBA in 1998 was the first major retrospective of his drawings, with a total of more than 700 works. These included sketches for architectural projects, many of which were visionary in nature; “cut” drawings, in which he explored “cuts” as a graphic technique; and “photoglyphs”, photographic sequences of graffiti on the trains of New York.

The exhibition was accompanied by a mini-retrospective of his work as a whole, which critically tackled issues related to architecture, urban planning, cultural activism, and the foundations of the historical definition of the concepts of artist and artwork. An extensive programme of his experimental films rounded off the project.