Gordon Matta-Clark: Discrete Violations

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) was an American artist who used buildings and cities as both the subject and material of his work. Trained as an architect, he became best known in the 1970s for cutting large openings into buildings that were about to be demolished. By removing sections of floors, walls and ceilings, he created unexpected views, passages and spaces within existing structures.

Discrete Violations brings Matta-Clark’s work into the De La Warr Pavilion at a moment when the building is preparing for a period of significant change. Designed by Erich Mendelsohn and Serge Chermayeff and opened in 1935, the Pavilion was built around modernist ideas about architecture’s ability to support public life, culture and wellbeing. Matta-Clark’s work questioned some of the promises of modern architecture, asking who buildings and cities are designed for and how they might be used differently.

For Matta-Clark, architecture was not fixed or permanent. He was interested in how buildings change through use, neglect and redevelopment, and in the systems that decide how space is owned, organised and controlled. His interventions made some of these systems visible, while opening up new ways of moving through and experiencing familiar structures.

The exhibition brings together photographs, drawings, notebooks, correspondence and films made during Matta-Clark’s short but influential career. These materials reveal the thinking and practical processes behind his projects. Notes and sketches show him testing ideas about space, while letters and documents record his negotiations with officials, property owners and others needed to make his often difficult projects happen.

Because many of Matta-Clark’s interventions were temporary, photography and film became an important part of his practice. They record spaces that no longer exist, but also transform them. Photographs were cut up and joined together to create new views through buildings, while films capture light, movement and bodies passing through spaces as they are being altered. Documentation therefore became another way for Matta-Clark to cut into and rearrange architecture.

Gordon Matta-Clark: Discrete Violations is supported by The Bridget Riley Art Foundation, Henry Moore Foundation, David Zwirner and the Art Fund Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant.