MATTA. Roberto Sebastian Matta, Gordon Matta-Clark e Pablo Echaurren Matta

Three names, three histories an just one common denominator: art. In conjunction with the 55. Venice Biennale, and for the first time together, the exhibition –organized and produced by Galleria d'Arte Maggiore – G.A.M. in Bologna – gathers three main protagonists of the international art scene in the spaces of the Scarpa Area of the Fondazione Querini Stampalia.
 
Gordon Matta-Clark and Pablo Echaurren don't only share the same father Roberto Sebastian Matta, historical personality who took part in the Surrealism and influenced the american artists of the Abstract Espressionism with his canvas and sculptures, but both of them are two personages of the contemporary artistic scene with their own different expressive styles.
 
The exhibition, curated by Danilo Eccher starts with the work of Roberto Sebastian Matta and thanks to the works of its protagonists goes through half century of history of art, lived in three different countries: France, United States and Italy. The cross-section obtained is not confined to a family, even if exceptional, but widens its borders to the cultural and political environment in which these artists were deeply immersed.

Children of the same father, but of different mothers, both Gordon and Pablo had a conflicting relationship with the father figure and they have both searched a conceptual dialogue – impossible in their private life – with Matta through their art even if they have elaborated – each one with his own style – unique and different languages. If the similarità with Matta-Clark can have references even at a formal, aesthetic-architectural level which is present in a different way even in his father's work, in Echaurren the affinity is to be found above all in the conceptual aspect deriving from the same Dadaist and late Surrealist source of his father and brother.

The central theme of their work will be critically unveiled by Danilo Eccher only a few days before the opening to the public. However, at a first reading it is clear that what is present in the work of our three artists  are social relations, the continuos research for a relationship with the public who doesn't only participate but is involved directly or indirectly, physically and mentally, culturally and socially, inside or outside the work. It is not just a coincidence if some defines the anthropomorphous figures by Matta both in his paintings and in his sculptures as “social morphologies”, as a passing transformation from interior landscapes to the exterior world.

For Gordon,  sociality is an even more evident factor, being his art based on performance, on “building cuts”, sculptural transformations of pre-existing architectures where the viewer is invited to enter to move physically and with emotions in those spaces. In his work, Matta-Clark creates a direct relationship with the viewer, often based on the confidence that this person has to give to the work of the artist, which has architectural foundation as in Matta.

Instead, as far as Pablo is concerned, all his artistic life is immersed in the aspects of society, in the everyday existence. And if it true that his canvases are related to the world of cartoons, music, street art and mass culture, the artist proposes with irony a direct critic to the consumerist society through his pop iconography made of contaminations of genres dialoguing now with the Dadaism and now with the Surrealism itself ando so through the appearance of a familiar and at the same
time disquieting nature. As the anthropomorphous and primitive figures in his father's paintings
seem to suggest.

It is not a coincidence that Matta's work aims also at a reflection on the impact that technology has on human existence.

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