In May 2017, I have been giving this lecture at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, within the exhibition “SPLITTING, CUTTING, WRITING, DRAWING, EATING… GORDON MATTA-CLARK”. I have been working on this amazing artist for more than ten years, in and outside the academic context. For the last days of the Gordon Matta-Clark’s exhibition in Paris, at the Jeu de Paume’s museum, I would like to share this work I have done first of all in the memory of Gordon Matta-Clark himself and to show how deeply his work is an inspiration for all of us today.
Gordon Matta Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975. Collaged gelatin silver prints. Galerie Marian Goodman.
1. EPIPHANIES
My first encounter with GMC was in 2006, in the context of a classroom.
I was teaching in a Postgraduate Design Program in Paris, and the workshop was about individual creative process. I was asking my students to bring their main sources of inspiration, in forms of images, objects, stories, as the basis for one-to-one interviews. Isabelle, a French student, showed me a picture of Conical Intersect, one of the last building cuttings made by Gordon Matta-Clark in Paris, in 1975.
I still remember the shock, which I called an «epiphany» in a lecture, some years ago. What is rarely said about research — research being artistic or academic — is that we don’t choose our subject, the subject finds us, stops us, hurts us, points us, slams us. This is always a shock, may this shock be soft or violent, that will never be forgotten.