Macchi is known for his interest in cartography, and he has produced a broad repertoire of works that take mapping, territory, and descriptions of traveling as points of departure. Collage is paramount in his work, in which cutting and pasting depict absence and void. The artist created this multipart work during a residency in Paris. Referring to a city plan, Macchi drew and painted in gouache only the thirty-two segments of the Seine between the bridges and around the islands that interrupt the river on a map. He thus reduced Paris’s central body of water to a series of static geometric shapes, a serial unfolding of abstract fragments; similarly, by isolating the segments of the river, he undid the wholeness of the city. Distributed on the wall in accordance with their relative locations in the map of Paris, the fragments reflect the water’s flow, emphasizing its wandering path and its ever-moving contents, an ancient metaphor for the ongoing, ungraspable dynamism of human existence.
A Trip from Here to There, March 15–July 30, 2013.
Explore more
From MoMA Design Store
Installation views
We have identified this work in the following photos from our exhibition history.
Licensing
Artwork or archival images
If you would like to reproduce an image of a work of art in MoMA's collection, or an image of a MoMA publication or archival material (including installation views, checklists, and press releases), please contact Art Resource (publication in North America) or Scala Archives (publication in all other geographic locations).
Audio and film clips
MoMA licenses archival audio and select out of copyright film clips from our film collection. At this time, MoMA produced video cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. All requests to license archival audio or out of copyright film clips should be addressed to Scala Archives at [email protected]. Motion picture film stills cannot be licensed by MoMA/Scala. For access to motion picture film stills for research purposes, please contact the Film Study Center at [email protected]. For more information about film loans and our Circulating Film and Video Library, please visit Circulating Film and Video Library.
Text from a publication or the archives
If you would like to reproduce text from a MoMA publication, please email [email protected]. If you would like to publish text from MoMA's archival materials, please fill out this permission form and send to [email protected].
Feedback
This record is a work in progress. If you have additional information or spotted an error, please fill out this feedback form.