On 23 May 2011, the art collector Harold Berg deposited with MACBA a legacy of 46 photographs taken by Gordon Matta-Clark (New York, 1943-1978) himself to record his famous “building cuts”, ephemeral pieces taken from buildings. According to the curator Elisabeth Sussman, these photographs form “an exceptional series provided by Matta-Clark himself to document one of the most outstanding facets of his work”. Sussman refers to the Bex Archive, which Berg acquired from Florent Bex in order to include it in his LATA Collection, and which he has now deposited indefinitely at MACBA. The series comprises 44 vintage photographs, a negative and a manipulated slide.

The images document Matta-Clark’s technique of making ephemeral cuts in buildings, a practice which assured him a prominent place in the history of contemporary art. In the first, Bronx Floors (1972-1973), he outwitted the police in order to use a handsaw and cut out rectangular sections from floors and walls in abandoned buildings in the Bronx neighbourhood, which he then showed at commercial galleries. In the last of these actions, Circus-Caribbean Orange (1978), commissioned by the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Matta-Clark drew a complex web of circular cuts in three houses adjoining the museum itself.

The thematic thread to the exhibition is provided by Office Baroque (1977-2005), one of Matta-Clark’s most important works, produced at the invitation of Florent Bex, director of the Internationaal Cultureel Centrum (ICC) in Antwerp. This building cut has been defined as the “most beautiful flight of light, air and time”. The title of this masterpiece not only alludes to Rubens (the intervention was carried out as part of commemorations for the 400th anniversary of the Flemish painter’s death) but is also, implicitly, one of Matta-Clark’s jokes, as Office Baroque sounds like Office Broke, an allusion to the bankruptcy of capitalism. The show also includes 10 drawings from the series “Sky Hooks” (1974), produced by Matta-Clark shortly before his death and recently acquired by the MACBA Foundation.