by cutting gaps into buildings he RePlaced the building as a material in a subversive sculptural rather than architectural sense. (has links to DmSubversion and the misapply of DmCraft as well)
"Matta-Clark had cut a huge sail-shaped hole out of an abandoned waterfront warehouse... Crow tells an amusing anecdote about how Matta-Clark stuck the needle into the architectural establishment when he was invited to exhibit with the New York Five in 1976. He made Peter Eisenman furious when, as part of a piece called Window Blow-Out, he shot holes through all the windows in the gallery of the Institute for Architecture and Urban Resources. If only briefly, Matta-Clark had displaced the institute to the South Bronx." -
Crow
In Bingo he sliced a home in half
Cooper's Cut/ Lieberman's Closet
from Object to Be Destroyed: The Work of Gordon Matta-Clark.
Pamela M. Lee
Work
work as "something perceived as total, finished and whole; as a self-contained and rational thing..." plus notion of work as "an object of labor." p. xiii
Ironizing the House
"ironizing the house" with his "inversion of the monument" p. 2,3
Defunctionalizing
"in Genoa, he set out 'defunctionalizing' an office for engineers... rendering it literally workless because no longer functional" p. 12, about A W-Hole House, 1973, Genoa, Italy
Undoing a building... captive audience
"By undoing a building... there are many aspects of the social conditions againts which I am gesturing.. first, to open a state of enclosure which has been preconditioned not only by physical necessity but by the industry that profligates suburban and urban boxes asa context for ensuring a passive, isolated consumer - a virtually captive audience." p. 26
Collapsed public art viewing into suburban privacy
"With the suburban environs of Splitting, Matta Clark had collapsed a very public activity - the collective viewing of art - onto a space conventionally regarded as private; and the categories of suburban and urban, center and periphery were liekwise ' defunctionalized' by the artist's intervention." p. 28
A "liberating" gesture
not just a destructive act. p. 28
And creative Destruction
"The object is made at the moment of the building's ruination - the work's simultaneous self-effacement as it comes into presence" p. 46
Peeling back
"why hang things on a wall when the wall itself is so much more a challenging medium?" p. 67