Conical Intersect

For the Paris Biennial in 1975, Matta-Clark carved a series of circles into the abandoned shell of a town house in the working-class section of Paris, alongside the skeletal frame of the Pompidou Center. Working on many levels, the cuts suggest a sense of physical and visual instability. “The conical shape cutting like a periscope through the old Paris into the new, was inspired by Anthony McCall’s film Line Describing a Cone,” according to EAI’s program notes.