Böcker av Gordon Matta-Clark

An essential reference that provides new understanding of the thought processes of one of the most radical artists of the late twentieth century. Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) has never been an easy artist to categorize or to explain. Although trained as an architect, he has been described as a sculptor, a photographer, an organizer of performances, and a writer of manifestos, but he is best known for un-building abandoned structures. In the brief span of his career, from 1968 to his early death in 1978, he created an oeuvre that has made him an enduring cult figure. In 2002, when Gordon Matta-Clark's widow, Jane Crawford, put his archive on deposit at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, it revealed a new voice in the ongoing discussion of artist/architect Matta-Clark's work: his own. Gwendolyn Owens and Philip Ursprung's careful selection and ordering of letters, interviews, statements, and the now-famous art cards from the CCA as well as other sources deepens our understanding of one of the most original thinkers of his generation. Gordon Matta-Clark: An Archival Sourcebook creates a multidimensional portrait that provides an opportunity for readers to explore and enjoy the complexity and contradiction that was Gordon Matta-Clark.

A new publication spotlights Gordon Matta-Clark's only extant architectural pieceIn 1972, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) installed a dumpster on the street between 98 and 112 Greene Street in New York's SoHo neighborhood, an architectural artwork he called Open House. Matta-Clark used discarded, scavenged materials--old pieces of wood, doors--to subdivide the space inside the dumpster, creating corridors and small rooms within the container. Dancers and artists moved around the space, their pedestrian movements activating the sculpture and captured in a Super-8 film of the piece. Matta-Clark is best known for his building cuts and architectural interventions. Because of the nature of this work and its context--sited in spaces abandoned or slated for demolition--Matta-Clark's "anarchitecture" was almost necessarily ephemeral, surviving as only documentation and sculptural sections. Open House (1972) is the only still-extant architectural piece by Matta-Clark. Gordon Matta-Clark: Open House is the first publication to focus on this crucial piece by the artist, using it as a way into his complex body of work. Featuring contributions from Sophie Costes, Thierry Davila and Lydia Yee, this volume takes a historical and theoretical approach to Open House and Matta-Clark's entire oeuvre.