Linda Matalon. Marcas imborrables /Indelible Traces

03.11.2022–29.07.2023

Linda Matalon. Marcas imborrables /Indelible Traces
Curated by Victoria Noorthoorn

The exhibition presents two crucial series from her vast production of works on paper. Created across two pandemics which left a deep mark on the artist: AIDS, which so affected the LGTB+ community to which Matalon belongs, in the early 1990s and COVID-19, which has been ravaging our planet since December 2019. Linda Matalon

Both series are in small format – works on paper which the artist had at hand during the AIDS emergency or the recent lockdowns – and both series hinge on a symbiosis between paper, wax and tar or graphite, materials that merge to enable the technically indelible record of each of her gestures, lines and marks. True palimpsests of the time during which Matalon captured her daily, existential and spiritual experiences and her deepest convictions about art and life, these works, whether urgent or meditative, allow us a glimpse of these crucial moments in our contemporaneity, at both the subjective and the social levels. They are, then, a reflection of their time, of two deep crises that marked historic turning points in human understanding.

But perhaps the strength of Matalon’s drawings lies in the fact that, while they engage with these specific moments, they are articulated in an abstract language capable of pushing the boundaries of individual expression. In her insertion of graphite, in the waxing and scraping of the paper to reveal its soul, Matalon enunciates an energetic, spiritual discourse that invites us to accompany the artist in her responses to a world of pain and loneliness, but also one imbued with the joy of meeting and sharing. Somewhere between drama and bliss, Matalon’s oeuvre inhabits one of the most classical categories in art history: the experience of the sublime, of the beauty that can only be reached after the experience of horror.

Linda Matalon (US 1958) works in Brooklyn, NY, and has biographical roots in Germany and Cuba. Her works are included in museum collections such as the Centre Pompidou, the Deutsche Bank Collection and The Hood Museum Dartmouth College. Her art has been on view in international shows including “Risk” at Turner Contemporary, UK (2015), “The Circle Walked Casually” at Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (2014), Deutsche Kunsthalle Berlin (2013), “Linda Matalon, Agnes Martin, Joyce Hinterding” at National Art School, Darlinghurst, Australia (2014), the 11th Biennale de Lyon (2013), Immaterial, Ballroom, Marfa, TX (2010) and the 7th Mercosul Biennial, Brazil (2009). 2021 the Heidelberger Kunstverein dedicated a solo exhibition to her.