Having begun his artistic career as a painter, Carlos Bunga soon became aware of the limitations of the medium. The discovery of the work of Gordon Matta Clark and his ‘anarchitectures’ affected him deeply as an artist. An interest in architecture and ephemeral processes increasingly guided his work and helped him find his own method for creating large installations and nomadic architectures.

Bunga’s works in the MACBA Collection date from this embryonic moment in his distinctive method: four films showing the process of gestation and research leading to the method. Made during the artist’s formative years, they highlight the limitations of painting and his interest in architecture and decadent monuments, especially in cities such as Oporto and Lisbon. Produced in a domestic environment using a small format, Bunga introduces the spatial component of painting in his films, working with the idea of the maquette and developing a new gestural vocabulary that eventually configured his own language. As the artist explains: ‘The embryo, so to speak, is the beginning of the work process.’ Bunga is approaching ideas of fragility, temporality and chance that will become recurring elements in his later works.

These are small structures made with painted plastic in which a gestural code intervenes: cutting and opening the structure, recomposing it and finding its presence in the space. Referring to Cut, the artist says: ‘This video contains the small gesture of cutting and opening.’ In Construction, a small plastic box is deconstructed by the artist and turned into different structures. Shadow traces the imprint of a building, its physical memory. And Untitled shows a small cardboard house made by the artist, who then lifts it leaving an imprint or mark.