Cuttings
Ensemble
With electric grinding discs and chainsaws, Gordon Matta-Clark ‘draws’, as it were, in/on/through walls, beams, ceilings and floors. He handles buildings like they are manageable works of sculpture.
“The petrified notion that architects build walls and artists decorate them, runs counter to my vision of both professions. A simple cutting, or a series of cuttings, functions as a powerful drawing instrument capable of redefining spatial situations and spatial structural components.” (Gordon Matta-Clark)
By applying incisions and cut-outs to a building, its guts and structures are laid bare. Daylight can now penetrate in unexpected ways. His cuttings make the building readable anew and afresh, breaking through our automatic, everyday perception.
