Gordon Matta-Clark. Urban Alchemy

Trained as an architect, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) used neglected structures slated for demolition as his raw material, carving out sections of buildings with a chainsaw. In this way, he revealed their hidden construction, provided new ways of perceiving space, and created metaphors for the human condition. When wrecking balls knocked down his sculpted buildings, little remained, which is partially why the artist creatively documented his own work with photography, film, and video. He also kept a few building segments, known as "cuts". They include a section of an apartment floor ("Bronx Floors"), three parts of a house near Love Canal ("Bingo"), a window from an abandoned warehouse on a pier in New York City ("Pier In/Out"), and four corners from the roof of a house in New Jersey ("Splitting: Four Corners"). For this exhibition, the Pulitzer has borrowed these very cuts from The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and from the private collection of Thomas and John Solomon. The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark has also lent over forty photographs, while the Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal, has provided numerous works on paper, including nine drawings. Two of his films, "Fire Child" and "Conical Intersect", are also on view, offering a means to understand better the performance aspect of his art. By placing Matta-Clark's rough domestic "cuts" into the pristine public architecture by Tadao Ando at the Pulitzer, we hope not only to offer our audiences new ways to think about the artist and the architect, but also to incite questions concerning the social, political and geographical circumstances that give architecture its meaning. A web catalogue corresponds with the exhibition at http://mattaclark.pulitzerarts.org.

Not unlike an alchemist, Matta-Clark found houses and objects that no one else wanted and transformed them into art. Such poetic and daring involvement with the urban fabric did much to represent and reinterpret abandoned buildings and places. In presenting the first exhibition of his work in St. Louis, the Pulitzer has planned innovative programming with Washington University's George Warren Brown School of Social Work that will help to address critically the state of St. Louis's neighborhoods. For information on these programs visit http://mattaclark.pulitzerarts.org/transformation/

Gordon Matta-Clark
Urban Alchemy