Linda MATALON
November 5th – December 15th, 2019
Drawing makes it possible to give an external expression to layers of thoughts, feelings, experiences, fragments of consciousness, which often cannot be described by words. It also offers the opportunity to create a distance between what is felt and what is lived, what is thought and what is said. At the border of the incommunicable, drawing is a gesture that creates a passage between the inside and the outside, a dialogue between the mind and representation. And yet the oral tradition and drawing are closely linked. Like speech, drawing captures a concept in an external form.
Through drawing, a mental space can be translated inside a different space. Between the two, however, something gets lost because of the process used. This is how the work remains marked by an absence, perhaps creating a certain melancholy. Drawing is also intrinsically linked to the idea of space and time. The notion of passage that defines it implies the existence of spaces to cross, and experiment. This journey requires time.
Since her earliest memory, drawing was Matalon’s primary language. Beginning in the late 1970s, she focused on works on paper. But she shares with others a devotion to both sculpture and creating works on paper as a defining characteristic in her body of work.
It was in the 1980’s while involved with AIDS activism that Matalon first created a series of sculptures. These were immediately acclaimed, while her drawings were slow to receive deserved attention from professionals and critics. Yet she always considered her drawings as central and essential. She regards the photographs that she has created as forms of drawings, and the pieces of furniture she has produced should be recognized as tools to facilitate the experience of the work on paper.
The choice of materials (wax, graphite, glue, tar, gauze…) and techniques used (addition, subtraction), as well as the predominance of the hand-made, create in the work of Linda Matalon a direct relationship with postmodernism as embodied by Eva Hesse. Like her, Matalon conveys a struggle with potent forces. The works communicate effort and coping, compromise and loss, in the act of navigating chaos, emotions, and change.
Ultimately, the peaceful and meditative nature of drawing—a solitary activity—has to be seen in relation to the artist’s gesture. After 9/11, and a visit to an exhibition dedicated to Barnett Newman, her work became even more imprinted with a spirituality.
The realization of her drawings implies for Matalon the implementation of a long and unique material process. Typically, the surface is subjected to a complex process in order to create a luminous material which plays with transparency, preserving traces of every gesture: Alterations, erasures, lines, and every mark.
Some drawings are worked for years. Some become connected, joined as diptychs or triptychs—perhaps gathering or suggesting among them scattered fragments of absent objects or bodies or, emotional states long gone.
Interestingly, Matalon has chosen for her exhibition title, the Italian word Canto, an allusion to Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, an alternatively lyrical and epic work in the form of a long poem or song, a reference to a work composed of fragments. She presents a selection of large wax and graphite works on paper, including several diptychs, which are intercalated with smaller drawings. They exist between the imaginary and the real, between abstraction and figuration. Through time, the works reveal allusions to the body, especially the female body, and therefore overcome abstraction. Matalon’s drawings do more than represent, they produce spaces to experiment. To experience her works requires time. With this in mind, she sometimes creates pieces of furniture such as the bench she has designed and produced specifically for this exhibition, and which allows the visitor to take a necessary pause in order to experience the works. Said Matalon, Art takes us on a journey. Nothing else provides such an experience. A work of art can really take us somewhere, or it can bring us to the present in a second.
Florence Derieux
Linda Matalon (b. 1958) was born and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Her works are included in museum collections such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, the Deutsche Bank Collection, Frankfurt, Germany, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire and The Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY. Her work has been on view in international shows including, Risk, Turner Contemporary Art Museum, Margate, Kent, UK, (2015), The Circle Walked Casually, Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires, BA, Argentina, (2014), Linda Matalon, Agnes Martin, Joyce Hinterding, National Art School, Darlinghurst NSW, Australia (2014), A Terrible Beauty Is Born, the 11th Biennale de Lyon, Lyon, France (2013), Immaterial, Ballroom, Marfa, TX (2010), In Residence: Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth, Hood Museum, Hanover, NH (2014) and Grito e Escuta: the 7th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2009). Gallery exhibitions include, A Show Yet To be Titled, Lucie Fontiane, New York, NY (2017), Esther Kläs/Linda Matalon, Kadel-Willborn, Düsseldorf, Germany (2017), Grammer, Coustof Waxman, New York, NY (2017), Lean, Embajada, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2016), Signal to Noise, Gallery Niklas Belenius, Stockholm, Sweden (2013), Lucie Fontaine: Estate, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY (2012), Luis Camnitzer, Rosy Keyser, Robert Kinmont, and Linda Matalon, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY (2012), Great Desks and Chairs, C L E A R I N G Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2012).
Florence Derieux is an independent curator and writer based in New York City. She formerly was Director of Exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth New York (2017-2019); Curator of American Art of the Centre Pompidou Foundation and Curator-at-Large of the Centre Pompidou (2015-2017); Director of the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne (2008-2016); Curator of Art Basel Parcours (2013-2015); Curator-at-Large of Le Magasin-Centre National d’Art contemporain in Grenoble (2007); Curator for Contemporary Art of the Museum of Fine Arts in Lausanne (2005-2006); Deputy Director of the Picasso Museum in Antibes (2002-2004); Curator of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2000-2002). She also served as Tutor of the Ecole du Magasin’s International Curatorial Training Program in 2006- 2007, and simultaneously taught Art History and Exhibitions History, respectively, at the Ecole Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Montpellier and the University of Art and Design in Lausanne (ECAL) in 2007-2008. She has published numerous books and contributed texts to a number of publications and magazines. Since 2017, she is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Fondazione Furla.