Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien is presenting Matta, a large retrospective exhibition on Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren (1911 - 2002) of Chile, a leading painter who worked in modern abstract expressionism and surrealism. The exhibition is on view from February 24 - June 2, 2024, at Kunstforum Wien, and is undertaken in collaboration with the Matta Archives and the Galerie Gmurzynska. The breadth of the artist’s work is on display, highlighting his "inscapes", the psychological mindscapes he painted that were a major driver for his artistic career. Matta is curated by Ingried Brugger, Director, Kunstforum Wien, along with co-curator Bettina M. Busse, Curator, Kunstforum Wien. Busse joins STIR for an interview that sheds light on the nature of Matta’s "inscapes", and the thought process behind his continuous usage of representation within his largely surrealist works.

Matta’s "inscapes" underpin his entire oeuvre and are essential to understanding his work. Turning to their beginnings, Matta presented his concept of “psychological morphology” through his early art to André Breton and the Paris Surrealists in the autumn of 1938. In biology, morphology refers to the study of the form and structure of organisms, and Matta wished to pursue such a study of human emotions. As Busse tells STIR, “ [In] Matta’s first paintings, the painter creates a theory of the shape of states of consciousness: fear, pain, desire, hope. He does not show individual states of being, but social landscapes where feelings and ideas collide.” This, as she explains, is the root of the artist’s "inscapes".

As the contemporary artist progressed through his career, he became interested in portraying science and technology, which was rapidly evolving around him in real-time. The artist was fascinated by space technology, computers and more, and would even come to imagine artificial intelligence (AI) within his practice. Interestingly, Matta rarely, if ever, separated these facets of tech from their human beneficiaries. He would portray forms resembling humans alongside machinery within his work, existing in a state of chaotic synergy. In Busse’s words, “The kind of human beings he depicted enter in a symbiosis with apparatus.” She adds that the artist’s visions of the future, created in the 1950s, have been given new relevance by the ongoing AI boom.

He does not show individual states of being, but social landscapes where feelings and ideas collide. – Bettina M. Busse, Curator, Kunstforum Wien

The sense of chaos in the artist’s works, alluded to above, results from his blend of abstraction and direct representation, the latter of which he never truly abandoned. Whether through the gestures of his human protagonists or the haphazardly rendered forms of machines, Matta resisted non-representational abstraction within his artworks throughout his career. The artist’s reasoning behind this was rather interesting. As Busse explains, after witnessing the horrors of the Second World War, he was committed to addressing the political happenings of the world around him, and this necessitated some amount of representation.

An example of Matta’s usage of representation can be read in Cycle “Babbo Napalm” (1973), wherein the presence of an object resembling an aircraft bearing the designation “B 52” gives away Matta’s message: The object is most likely a Boeing B-52 Stratofortress bomber, which given the year that the painting was created in, had just completed a firebombing run in Vietnam. A particularly disturbing touch to the piece is the smiling female head on the bomber, resembling the American Statue of Liberty. Cycle “Babbo Napalm” is one of many works by Roberto Matta that warrant deep political readings, and visitors to the show are currently being treated to the extent of his work across seven rooms at the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien. Within the exhibition’s rooms, they may explore Matta’s many articulations of his inimitable visual language, which developed alongside the growing absurdity of modern society and politics.

‘Matta’ is on view at the Bank Austria Kunstforum Wien from February 24 - June 2, 2024.