Passing Through Architecture: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark / Jean Nouvel: in my head, in my eye… belonging…

At the end of 2019, Power Station of Art will launch two architecture exhibitions at the same day: Passing Through Architectures: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark and Jean Nouvel, in my head, in my eye… belonging…. As the continuation of PSA’s themed program “Architecture & City” Exhibitions and Researches, the two exhibitions are bound to be the fantastic year-end celebration for both art and architecture lovers.

Gordon Matta-Clark
From November 7, 2019 to February 16, 2020, the Power Station of Art will host the exhibition Passing Through Architecture: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) represents a unique case in 20th-century art history. He treated buildings as his artistic medium and is best known for his “cuttings” and reflections on “anarchitecture.” Starting in New York’s downtown SoHo district in the early 1970s, he cut into buildings as if drawing freely in space, producing some of the most celebrated artworks that continue to inspire generations of artists and architects today. As the first large-scale exhibition of Matta-Clark’s work in China, Passing Through Architecture: The 10 Years of Gordon Matta-Clark will trace the remarkable thinking and avant-garde works of this interdisciplinary artist from 1968 to 1978 with more than 400 drawings, photo-works, films and archival documents. The exhibition was curated by the renowned architecture historian Mark Wigley.

In the same spirit of Gordon Matta-Clark’s cuts, this exhibition will follow an existing breach in the Power Station of Art: an invisible diagonal line that passes through the entire building. Notably, this exhibition will display for the first time around 180 drawings and sketches that Matta-Clark never showed during his lifetime, his private explorations. His delicate drawings of trees, cacti, arrows, and energy configurations were an in-depth study of the organic world and the movements of energy that morphed into remarkable sketches of architectural interventions that the artist imagined but never carried out. This hidden world reveals a remarkable counterpart to the groundbreaking work that has made Matta-Clark one of the most admired artists of the 20th-century.  

Vernissage: November 6, 2019
Location: 3F Power Station of Art
Curator: Mark Wigley
Scenography Consultant: Li Hu
Organizer: Power Station of Art 

Jean Nouvel
From November 7, 2019 to March 1, 2020, the Power Station of Art presents the first solo exhibition in China of Pritzker Architecture Prize winner and Venice Architecture Biennale Golden Lion Award recipient, French architect Jean Nouvel. Rather than an usual architectural display, Nouvel will transform the exhibition room into a theater filled with light and shadow for his exhibition titled Jean Nouvel: In my head, in my eye… belonging. It will debut a three-and-a-half-hour film produced by Nouvel, as well as six works of art based on his architecture, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in what inspired Nouvel’s design practice, thus entering his thoughts and emotions.

Nouvel often mentions that the roles of architects and film directors are similar, and that the process of creating a building is like shooting a movie. Making use of his first exhibition in China, Jean Nouvel has achieved his “dream of directing”—his first film will premiere at the Power Station of Art. The three-and-a-half hour film features more than 100 construction projects by Nouvel around the world.

Vernissage: November 6, 2019
Location: 7F Power Station of Art
Organizer: Power Station of Art
Collaborated with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
Thanks to Fonds Jean Nouvel (France), Le Fresnoy-Studio National des arts contemporains, Ateliers Jean Nouvel (France), Hanbi Zijintai, Gifi Group, The Artists’ Garden, Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, Wing Tai Holding Limited (Singapore), Cardinal (France), Chrome Hearts (U.S.A), Nice Day (France), Compagnie de Phalsbourg (France), Constructa (France), Three On the Bund and Shanghai International Culture Association