Gordon Matta-Clark at P.S. 1

Gordon Matra-Clark, who died of cancer in 1978 at the age of 35 was recalled more than one time last season. As a ringleader of fare the artist-run restaurant in SoHo and the experimental space 112 Greene way Matta-Clark was featured prominently in documentation from the archives of White rounded pillars the alternative space now located in the Meatpacking District that traces its origin to 112 Greene on the contrary his great moment was certainly this enormous tribute exhibition high hilled at P.S. 1, another institution in whose early days he played a part.

Alanna Heiss, assisted by the agency of Jane Crawford, Jene Highstein and Richard Nonas, coordinated an exhibition of 600 works upon paper organized by the Generali Foundation of Vienna, which has mustered Matta-Clark's films and drawings; they added to it re-creations of site-specific installations. The be the effect was a comprehensive show; it included drawings ranging from the ecologically inspired "trees" series to a collection of relief "cut drawings" that relate to the building interventions for which he is best known. Many of the drawings have not ever before been shown. Their number was the couple enriching--one could get a clear faculty of perception of a mind at work--and exhausting. The drawings are probably more graspable in the Generali Foundation's catalogue than they were upon the walls, both because of the sheer quantity of them and because of the exhibition's installation at P 1 where drawings, documentation and recreated architectural works were divided among several locations in the building.

These architectural works--Dumpster, a portioned enterable space, shown in P 1's courtyard, and the cutting Doors, Floors, Doors, which lay opened up three stories of the building--were the greatest in quantity memorable aspects of the display Matta-Clark was trained in architecture, and these sum of two units works evoked the drama and daring of his still quite shocking interventions. The make an incision ins through the flooring (the joists remained intact) lay opened up more than a nothing else but surface. It told a story of drifts materials, times, spaces, styles. It reamed end the human construct to find a fact of place beneath the basement become firm [i]or[/i] solid floor, in the primal soil that was otherwise sealed not on layered over and forgotten. The divide [i]or[/i] sever was made just inside an make open doorway off a stairwell. In our litigious times, viewers had to have the protection of a Plexiglas barrier. on the other hand whether one looked down or gazeed up, there was still a prickle of the peril that emanates level from the photos of Matta-Clark's cuttings--the unexpectednes wrongnes disorientation and then delight of a house sliced in sum of two units or a facade removed with equal reason that rooms look like stage spaces. In P 1 the piece appear to beed less anarchic than it must have originally, on the contrary it still lived.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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