Matta- Alexander Iolas

Matta: Dis-Astronaute




Art Gallery Exhibition Brochure

Technical description: Matta (Roberto Sebastian Antonio Matta Echaurren) MATTA: DIS-ASTRONAUTE. New York: Alexander (Alexandre) Iolas Gallery, 1966. First Edition. 8vo. Printed Wrappers. Exhibition Brochure. Good +. One 8 x 11" sheet printed offset recto and verso, neatly folded in half to make 4pp, 1 b&w illustration. A handsome copy of this uncommon ephemeral item that was the only printed documentation of an exhibition. Arcana Books On The Arts


Outside of the four-panel brochure: the front-page text is referenced in The Atrocity Exhibition by the Kline character in the paragraph entitled "A Watching Trinity" in Notes Towards A Mental Breakdown: "Kline: 'Why must we await, and fear, a disaster in space in order to understand our own time? -- Matta.'". In his annotations to this story, Ballard says: "The Chilean painter, Roberto Matta, one of the last of the surrealists, asked this as yet unanswerable question. All disasters -- earthquakes, plane or car crashes -- seem to reveal for a brief moment the secret formulae of the world around us, but a disaster in space rewrites the rules of the continuum inself." One surmises that means it will somehow affect Time. This is reflected in the way Ballard has changed Matta's final question of "a disaster in space, in order to become aware of our world?" to Kline's "a disaster in space in order to understand our own time?". Ballard takes consciousness a dimension forward to understanding...