Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect

Best known for his monumental cuts, holes, apertures, and excisions to the facades of derelict homes and historic buildings in New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and abroad, Gordon Matta-Clark’s work conveys a potent critique of architecture’s role in relation to the capitalist system. Taking his 1970s series of Bronx “cuts” as a point of departure and entry into his engaged exploration of the city as a field of action, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect examines the artist’s pioneering social, relational, and activist approach. The survey highlights the political dialogue inherent in Matta-Clark’s artistic interventions, from his concern for the extreme plight of the homeless, his interest in direct community engagement, his belief that we should expand our lived experience of a city into its underground and inaccessible spaces, and his commentary on development and socioeconomic stratification.

In addition to Matta-Clark’s photographs, prints, drawings, and sculptures, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect includes rarely seen materials from the artist’s archive, as well as immersive film projections of his urban architectural interventions. 

Also on view

INDEX: The Meeting
On view through March 8, 2020

Think of the last meeting you were in. What did it feel like? Caroline Woolard, the Rose Art Museum’s 2019–20 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence, draws upon the formal and spatial languages of conflict mediation to transform the museum’s Lee Gallery into a platform for self-initiated and facilitated group discussions.

Into Form: Selections from the Rose Collection, 1957-2018
On view through Jan 5, 2020

Drawn from the museum’s exceptional postwar holdings, Into Form examines the ways in which artists from the late 1950s to the present have sought to break boundaries by questioning representation and notions of medium specificity.
 

Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect is organized by The Bronx Museum of the Arts. The exhibition is co-curatored by Antonio Sergio Bessa, Bronx Museum Director of Curatorial Programs; and Jessamyn Fiore, independent curator and co-director of the Matta-Clark Estate. The Rose Art Museum presentation is organized by Ruth Estevez, Senior Curator-at-Large, with Caitlin Julia Rubin, Assistant Curator.

Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect and the exhibition’s catalogue are made possible by the Henry Luce Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley, David Zwirner, Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, and Furthermore: a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund.

The Rose Art Museum presentation is made possible and supported by the Lois Foster Exhibition Fund.

INDEX: The Meeting is made possible and supported by the Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award Fund.