Gordon Matta-Clark

Gordon Matta -Clark (full name Gordon Matta Roberto Echaurren; born June 22, 1943 in New York; † August 27, 1978 in New York ) was an American architect and conceptual artist, who specializes in the areas of intervention and deconstruction.

Family

Gordon Matta -Clark was a son of the surrealist painter Roberto Matta and the artist Anne Clark ( second wife Anne Alpert ), and twin brother of John Sebastian Matta ( 1943-1976 ). Godmother was Alexina Duchamp, wife of Marcel Duchamp. The mother broke up shortly after the birth of the twins by Roberto Matta. She led since her marriage to the U.S. film critic Hollis Alpert in 1950, the name Anne Halpert.

In May 1978 - a few months before his death from pancreatic carcinoma - married Gordon Matta- Clark and Jane Crawford. As heiress Jane Crawford, the Generali Foundation in Vienna in the way of gift - is about documents by and about the artist - partly unpublished.

Life

Gordon Matta - Clark the name he took to distinguish from father only as an artist - grew up multilingual. Together with his mother and brother John Sebastian he lived from 1948/49, a year in France. In 1962, Gordon Matta -Clark at the School of Architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York ( USA), the study of architecture, which he finished with a Bachelor of Arts in 1968. From 1963 to 1964 he lived in Paris to study French literature at the Sorbonne.

Also during the May riots in 1968 Gordon Matta- Clark was in Paris. Through his studies in France, he learned the Situationists Guy Debord know. Another major influence on his work as a concept artist went out by the embossed by Jacques Derrida deconstruction.

The American Land Art artist Robert Smithson met Gordon Matta -Clark in 1969 at Cornell during the exhibition Earth Art know. From this period dates his departure from the traditional, based only on a single medium of art production and the move to multimedia art.

Works

Under the pseudonym George Smudge the artist built 1972, a wheelchair- like two-seater vehicle, combined with a fresh air tank: The traveling people can breathe fresh air during use.

In October 1971, Gordon Matta -Clark opened in SoHo (Manhattan ), together with Caroline Goodden, Tina Girouard, Suzanne Harris and Rachel Lew, the restaurant food, in the building 127 Prince Street / corner of Wooster Street. The restaurant was conceived by the initiators as a communication center, source of income and independent work of art. Mainly funded the dancer and photographer Carolin Goodden the art project for a period of two years. For the trained architect Gordon Matta -Clark, the inspiration came here from a combination of food and architecture to its first cuttings that made him famous in the following years.

In a New York landfill was Matta -Clark in 1972, a red truck with the lettering Herman Meydag crush of two tracked vehicles and mix with garbage. The performance is documented in the film Fresh Kill, what was the name of that waste facility.

In a performance in 1974, Matta -Clark climbed in New York a clock tower, from whose hands flowed water. Here he performed several shower actions that are recorded in the Movie Clock Shower.

In 1976 Matta -Clark led the New York underground through an exploration, which are documented in his film Substrait. Film- historical point of view can be in the recordings of the sewer comparable remuneration for the feature film produced The Third Man.

When the cuttings are sections that carried Gordon Matta- Clark by chainsaw or small electric hand saws through facades, ceilings and floors of buildings. Whole parts of the building, he removed to expose the view of the inside of an inhabited and used architecture as well as the internal structure of the wall structure.

In 1974 Matta -Clark first center disconnect in Englewood (New Jersey) an abandoned, to abort planned family house completely. In addition, he reduced the one-sided stone foundation, so there was a tendency and expansion of the division after the cut. The cut -documented Matta -Clark in the film splitting. Three months after this work was the house, through which the artist could have through the mediation of a gallery owner, demolished.

Without the permission of the owner parted Matta -Clark made ​​a hall wall in the port area of New York in 1975, a round, several meters high part out. He also remote load bearing timber structures. The film Days End shows the cutting of materials, at the same time the increasing light can impress the viewers.

Matta -Clark's interventions and deconstructions produced completely new perspectives. However, they only existed for a short time: The buildings were already released for demolition so that the cuttings are obtained as temporary works of art only through films and photographs.

It is caused by this work, a work group, which also bears the name anarchitecture. The neologism documented permanent resistance of the artist against a conservative architecture, which had given the experiment hardly any room. As an avant-gardist Gordon Matta -Clark has so prepared from his art out of the way for an architecture of deconstruction.