Gordon Matta-Clark

In summer 1975, as part of the Paris Biennale, Gordon Matta-Clark cut a piece out of two twin seventeenth-century houses, located close to the Centre Georges Pompidou, at that time under construction in the Les Halles quarter. The cut, in the shape of a twisted cone, was inspired by Anthony McCall’s film Line Describing a Cone (1973). For two weeks, passers-by could watch Matta Clark and his assistants at work. From the inside, the circular and increasingly large cut-out worked like a huge periscope, through which the city could be seen. From the street, the passers-by could see through the opened-out historical building to the futuristic looking art center behind it. (Sabine Breitwieser)