Gordon Matta-Clark

Gordon Matta-Clark: You Are the Measure is a full-scale retrospective of one of the key figures to emerge in the generation of artists that followed minimalism. During the brief but highly productive ten years that he worked as an artist, and even more so since his death at the age of 35, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–78) has exerted a powerful fascination on artists and architects who know his work. The son of surrealist painter Roberto Echaurren Matta, Matta-Clark produced a body of work that incorporated spatial, social, and psychological experiences. Best known for the variety of his often spectacular, planned architectural interventions, Matta-Clark’s works transformed everyday experiences into extraordinary visual encounters. Among the major works featured in the exhibition are sculptures made from his acclaimed architectural building cuts, as well as drawings, films, photographs, and notebooks. A wealth of documentary material related to his interactions with architecture and space, community events, and collective activity is also shown.

The exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and curated by Elisabeth Sussman, the Whitney's Curator and Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography. The presentation at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, is organized by MOCA Curator of Architecture and Design Brooke Hodge. The exhibition catalogue, published by the Whitney and distributed by Yale University Press, contains essays by Elisabeth Sussman, Briony Fer, Tina Kukielski, Gwendolyn Owens, Spyros Papapetros, Christian Scheidemann, and Joan Simon, with a foreword by Whitney director Adam D. Weinberg.

Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure” was organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in collaboration with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

Major support is provided by The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., and the National Committee of the Whitney Museum of American Art. Additional support is provided by The Andrew J. and Christine C. Hall Foundation, Donald R. Mullen, Jr., The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc., Elise Jaffe + Jeffrey Brown, Judith Neisser, and Michèle Gerber Klein and Jeffrey P. Klein.

MOCA’s presentation is made possible by generous support from Blake Byrne, LEF Foundation, Judith Neisser, and Thomas and John Solomon in memory of Holly and Horace Solomon.

Gordon Matta-Clark
YOU ARE THE MEASURE
Kuratoren: Elisabeth Sussman, Sondra Gilman