Gordon Matta-Clark — Museum in Motion

+++ This exhibition ran from 23 August 2022 to 5 April 2024. +++

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) described his activities as ‘anarchitecture’ – a synthesis of the concepts of anarchy and architecture. Anarchitecture fuses a critique of the institutionalisation of culture, a direct engagement with one’s environment, and a preference for physical action. His rather irreverent site-specific interventions combined the formal language of minimalism with the large scale of land art.  By making incisions into buildings, the interior and structure of a building were exposed, becoming readable in a new way. His art broke with traditional spatial perspective – there no longer being a centre, no top and bottom, and no inside and outside. The radicality of Matta-Clark’s interventions can be seen as a comment not only on architecture, but also on property speculation, exclusivity, and the commercialisation of the art world. A conceptual idealist, he was at the same time concerned with conviviality, creating working and meeting spaces in the urban environment.

The history of Muhka begins with the ICC, the International Cultural Centre in Antwerp. In 1977, Matta-Clark was invited by the ICC to realise the the magisterial project Office Baroque at the site of a former office block on Ernest Van Dijckkaai. After Matta-Clarke’s death the following year, and the establishment of the Gordon Matta-Clark Foundation, a major new museum project was developed around Office Baroque that, although failed, the fallout nevertheless laid the foundation for the Muhka collection.