"Completion through removal"
"Making the right cut somewhere between the supports and collapse."
I am still overwhelmed by this show. I was familiar with Gordon Matta-Clark's building cuts and photos, but seeing them with the films, that was incredible. One work is astonishing: a carving into a huge, abandoned industrial shed on Pier 52: cutting an enormous slice out of one of its tin walls and a quarter-circle out of the wood floor, right through a massive wood beam to expose the murky, glittering Hudson. In the film, as the vertical cut-out is slowly removed and the daylight crescendos, quickly flooding the frame, it's an Ode to Joy moment. Those few seconds of white light transform the space into a cathedral; sunlight sponsored by God. It's summer 1975 and this is "Day's End". This piece is EXHILARATING.
"...a layered drawing the viewer participates in."
Worth the price of admission is "Office Baroque," a lyrical portrait of a building cuts' planning, revising, execution, and aftermath. It's in Antwerp, a commercial structure. His saws create "a walk-through panoramic arabesque." The camera pans up, the wide-angle lens distorting, leveling, then distorting the view. And what a view! Through three floors to a circle of grey sky, each opening different but congruent. Swoops and swirls of slices penetrate partitions, walls, floors. It's as complex as it is gorgeous. And then, to a plaintive sax, the still, swept-up space, many of the rooms roped off. This film is screened on the second floor, at approx. 3.45 pm (it's on a loop with a great deal of his films and the Whitney doesn't give out exact times, so I did some calculations), Fridays at 6.45, and only til April 29.
"It was really a matter of tying different intersects together."
That might as well be a mantra, as well as a metaphor.
Matta-Clark was a punk (that's a compliment); a sculptor, photographer, filmmaker. A recycler/transformer (his tao d'art, so to speak);a deconstructor, a conceptualist, catalyst, thinker, muse. He was funny (a fried-in-oil and gilded Polaroid was a Christmas card[!?]). He admittedly did stuff just to see what would happen. His work incorporated process, performance, documentation, and artifact. He took the concept of Earth Art and urbanized it. An element of vibrancy, risk, violence ("anarchitecture") and sexy physicality ran through the pieces. And, of course, his work was, and still is, vigorously new. This compact retrospective is a stunner. You will leave the building staring up, questioningly...
"It's all about evolution." Awesome, right on, amen.
Gordon Matta-Clark, "You Are the Measure", at the Whitney
945 Madison Ave.
800-944-8639
through June 3
www.whitney.org
www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/132/selected_works.htm
p.s.--this is not a hagiography, but the knee pads are out...
I am still overwhelmed by this show. I was familiar with Gordon Matta-Clark's building cuts and photos, but seeing them with the films, that was incredible. One work is astonishing: a carving into a huge, abandoned industrial shed on Pier 52: cutting an enormous slice out of one of its tin walls and a quarter-circle out of the wood floor, right through a massive wood beam to expose the murky, glittering Hudson. In the film, as the vertical cut-out is slowly removed and the daylight crescendos, quickly flooding the frame, it's an Ode to Joy moment. Those few seconds of white light transform the space into a cathedral; sunlight sponsored by God. It's summer 1975 and this is "Day's End". This piece is EXHILARATING.
"...a layered drawing the viewer participates in."
Worth the price of admission is "Office Baroque," a lyrical portrait of a building cuts' planning, revising, execution, and aftermath. It's in Antwerp, a commercial structure. His saws create "a walk-through panoramic arabesque." The camera pans up, the wide-angle lens distorting, leveling, then distorting the view. And what a view! Through three floors to a circle of grey sky, each opening different but congruent. Swoops and swirls of slices penetrate partitions, walls, floors. It's as complex as it is gorgeous. And then, to a plaintive sax, the still, swept-up space, many of the rooms roped off. This film is screened on the second floor, at approx. 3.45 pm (it's on a loop with a great deal of his films and the Whitney doesn't give out exact times, so I did some calculations), Fridays at 6.45, and only til April 29.
"It was really a matter of tying different intersects together."
That might as well be a mantra, as well as a metaphor.
Matta-Clark was a punk (that's a compliment); a sculptor, photographer, filmmaker. A recycler/transformer (his tao d'art, so to speak);a deconstructor, a conceptualist, catalyst, thinker, muse. He was funny (a fried-in-oil and gilded Polaroid was a Christmas card[!?]). He admittedly did stuff just to see what would happen. His work incorporated process, performance, documentation, and artifact. He took the concept of Earth Art and urbanized it. An element of vibrancy, risk, violence ("anarchitecture") and sexy physicality ran through the pieces. And, of course, his work was, and still is, vigorously new. This compact retrospective is a stunner. You will leave the building staring up, questioningly...
"It's all about evolution." Awesome, right on, amen.
Gordon Matta-Clark, "You Are the Measure", at the Whitney
945 Madison Ave.
800-944-8639
through June 3
www.whitney.org
www.davidzwirner.com/exhibitions/132/selected_works.htm
p.s.--this is not a hagiography, but the knee pads are out...
posted by M. Apparition at 6:11 PM
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