Author(s): MATTON AND VIRILIO

Photography

Charles Matton's perfect small-scale reconstructions are a disruptive yet profoundly bewitching glimpse of our physical and private world. Charles Matton (1931 2008) was a French painter, sculptor, photographer, stage designer, screenwriter, and producer. An extraordinary, multifaceted artist, Matton explored the many possibilities of visual and written expression, only to become more aware of their limitations. His desire to create reality and not merely represent it led him to design, build, paint, and weave in order to reconstitute over 200 striking three-dimensional scenes of our everyday life, drawing from the European tradition of handmade dollhouses, imaginative literary fiction, trompe loeil techniques, and Dutch and American realist painting. His miniature boxes or space reconstructions have been exhibited worldwide. The first significant work on Matton in English, this book brings together all of his boxes for the first time. Matton, like a true artisan, constructed these miniature universes in exquisite detail, from minuscule furniture and paintings to windows and telephones. Among his many reconstructions we find culturally iconic spaces, such as the studios of Bacon and Giacometti, Freuds study, and the Cafe de Flore in Paris. These works are masterpieces in themselves, but for Matton they also provided a forum for his photography, painting, and sculpture, all of which are featured in the book. "Charles Matton: Enclosures" invites the reader into the magical realm of the artist, where he constantly reevaluated preconceptions about the proportionality of both the world and ourselves as its inhabitants.