Gordon Matta-Clark

Son of the Surrealist painter Roberto Matta, like his father he initially studied architecture and promptly showed his decided aversion to the program of Modernist agenda that lay at the basis of the curriculum at Cornell University. However, it was at this university that he met Robert Smithson whose interest in sites, non-sites, and entropy were to become particularly significant during the course of his research.
Matta-Clark’s intense artistic career can be dated between 1971 and 1978, the year of his untimely death. In this short period of time, the artist created what he called “cuttings,” interventions in disused buildings consisting of drilled holes, or partial demolitions of walls or other architectural elements. These investigations that in some cases take on monumental proportions were carried out on buildings intended for demolition but which the action on the part of the artist transformed into powerful statements on the inevitable temporality of architecture and the subversion of its fundamental principles. The manipulated building created the conditions for new perspectives, becoming places of new and unusual vistas, telescopic and periscopic visions. The artist documented the interventions through photographs, films, and videos, which he also intended as independent artistic expressions and that, together with fragments removed from some buildings, today remain as his only existing works.
From the outset Matta-Clark specified the nature of his personal artistic project, comparing his building cuts to “juggling with syntax.” This metaphor clearly shows that the artist did not intend his gesture to be a destructive act. Rather, each intervention constituted above all a challenge to the idea of fixed space innate in the concept of architecture, thereby opening up the built space to mobility, to a dialogue with light, and to the entire range of possible atmospheric conditions, the perception of which proves to be dramatically enhanced.
At the same time the violence of the action and the weight of the mechanical apparatus necessary for each project raise issues regarding the presumed sacredness of domestic space. These factors have also been seen as part of the artist’s biographical vicissitudes and his conflictive relationship with his father. In any event, many of Matta-Clark’s projects were carried out in private homes, built either in urban areas or in the suburbs of large cities. The artist’s action consequently implied a precise social comment that regarded the rejection of a modular living space, closed and isolated, which transforms its inhabitants into virtual prisoners.
The idea of the formulation of a common social spirit can be seen in some of the artist’s projects that include his commitment towards the “Food” restaurant, opened in 1971, which in SoHo acted as a meeting place for the local artistic community. With an analogous interest in an art capable of priming and increasing occasions for social exchange, Matta-Clark organized various events and developed projects that witnessed the direct participation of the community or the public. The artist was also a member of the group called Anarchitecture whose meetings and projects investigated spaces ignored by the language of traditional architecture. [M.B.]

List of Works

Program One, 1971
video, black and white, sound, 60 min.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Chinatown Voyeur, 1971
video, black and white, sound, 60 min.
The video is a journey among the buildings that characterize Chinatown in New York. Views of the skyline are alternated with images of home interiors. The latter are filmed as fragments of life with the eye of the voyeur who scrutinizes the privacy of others.

Program Two, 1971–1972
transferred from Super 8 and 16 mm film, black and white, color, silent, 50 min. 32 sec.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Tree Dance, 1971
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, silent, 9 min. 32 sec.
The video regards a performance inspired by spring fertility rituals enacted on temporary structures built on the top of a large tree.
Open House, 1972
transferred from Super 8 film, color, silent, 41 min.
In a street in SoHo, an industrial container is transformed by the artist into a series of traversable spaces thanks to the use of doors and other found, discarded materials. The video is filmed on a rainy day during an inauguration-performance improvised by Matta-Clark with the collaboration of other artists and friends.

Program Three, 1971–1975
transferred from Super 8 and 16 mm film, black and white, color, silent, sound, 45 min. 45 sec.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Fire Child, 1971
transferred from Super 8 film, color, silent, 9 min. 47 sec.
The film documents the creation of a wall made with rubbish, including paper and cans, which the artist presented as a contribution to the exhibition Brooklyn Bridge Event.
Fresh Kill, 1972
transferred from 16 mm film, color, sound, 12 min. 56 sec.
The film documents the destruction of the artist’s truck, which he nicknamed “Herman Meydag.” The action is carried out by a bulldozer in a garbage dump.
Day’s End, 1975
transferred from Super 8 film, color, silent, 23 min. 10 sec.
Cuts made on the roof and the walls of a monumental warehouse transform the space into a sort of sacred environment inside which sunlight becomes the protagonist. The intervention is carried out on an abandoned building near the Meat Packing District in New York. At the time, the area, which once bustled with business activity, was in a state of abandon.

Program Four, 1973
video, black and white, sound, 61 min. 30 sec.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Sauna View, 1973
video, black and white, sound, 61 min. 30 sec.
Some friends of the artist chat while having a sauna. The film is shot externally and is intentionally non-descriptive, favoring instead the idea of the fragment.

Food, 1972
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, sound, 43 min.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
The video documents the daily activity of “Food,” an art event and commercial venture that became the principal meeting place for the artists in SoHo during the seventies. In the restaurant, one could eat or take part in events centered around the presentation of food that was not necessarily edible. “Food” was run by a cooperative of artists, including Matta-Clark and his companion, Caroline Goodden, a dancer and photographer. The design of that space was in part the result of Anarchitecture meetings and projects.

Program Five, 1972–1976
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, silent, sound, 60 min. 50 sec.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Automation House, 1972
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, sound, 32 min.
Glass or mirrors reflect people and their movements.
Clockshower, 1973
transferred from 16 mm film, color, silent, 13 min. 50 sec.
Suspended in the open, the artist takes a shower, brushes his teeth, and shaves. To create this piece, Matta-Clark climbed on the top of the Clocktower in New York.
City Slivers, 1976
transferred from 16 mm film, color, silent, 15 min.
In adopting non-descriptive viewing points, the artist concentrates on partial architectural views of New York. Silent, the film was initially conceived to be projected onto exterior architecture.

Program Six, 1974–1976
transferred from Super 8 and 16 mm film, black and white, color, silent, sound, 50 min. 30 sec.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Splitting, 1974
transferred from Super 8 film, black and white, color, silent, 10 min. 50 sec.
Over a number of months the artist carries out two deep vertical cuts on a typical one-family home in the suburbs of New Jersey. By lowering the level of the walls that constitute the foundations, the volume of the house is cut in half by a narrow triangular section. He also cuts out the four corners on the second floor. Within the altered structure, sunlight can transform the interior spaces. The film is a document of the performance and an autonomous work.
Bingo X Ninths, 1974
transferred from Super 8 film, color, silent, 9 min. 40 sec.
As in playing Bingo, although following reverse logic, the artist progressively removes sections of the façade of a house near Niagara Falls. The action begins by dividing the building into a grid made up of nine sections.
Substrait (Underground Dailies), 1976
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, color, sound, 30 min.
The film explores selected underground sites in New York. The places include train tunnels, an aqueduct, a storm sewer and pumping station, and the underground vaults of a church.

Program Seven, 1974–1977
transferred from Super 8 and 16 mm film, black and white, color, 44 min.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Conical Intersect, 1975
transferred from 16 mm film, color, silent, 18 min. 40 sec.
In Paris, the artist intervenes on two identical buildings of the seventeenth century by making a major cut, joining them in a sort of knot formed by twined circles. The two buildings are from among those to be demolished in order to make room for the Centre Pompidou. This work was Matta-Clark’s contribution to the 1975 Paris Biennial.
Sous-Sols de Paris (Paris Underground), 1977
transferred from Super 8 film, black and white, sound, 25 min. 20 sec.
Following a non-linear structure, the film presents an investigation of well-known buildings or places of the French capital, from façades to foundations and underground spaces.

Program Eight, 1977–2005
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, color, sound, 40 min.
Purchased with the contribution of the Compagnia di San Paolo
Office Baroque, 1977
transferred from 16 mm film, black and white, color, sound, 40 min.
Filmed in a documentary form by Eric Convents and Roger Steylaerts, the film is on one of the artist’s last works. The project is a monumental intervention in Antwerp on a five-store building, which the artist cuts following circular and semicircular motifs. The work, which Matta-Clark himself defined as “a walk through panoramic arabesque,” existed until 1980. Notwithstanding the attempts to preserve and transform it into a museum dedicated to the artist, the building-work was demolished.

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