Moment to Moment: Space

With his astounding building cuts and intersects, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-1978) opened up elegant geometries in the very structures that seem most substantial and most authoritative in urban existence, revealing the alienations of the urban fabric as convenient fictions and allowing life to flow into the most inhospitable and self-contained of buildings. One of his favorite responses to a work came from a Parisian concierge: “I see the purpose for that hole–it is an experiment in bringing light and air into spaces that never had enough of either.” Throughout his all-too-brief career, Matta-Clark undertook civic aeration on many fronts, cofounding the now legendary Food Restaurant in 1971, buying up empty lots in Queens and evolving his theory of “anarchitecture” in films, photomontages and numerous writings and drawings. Anarchitecture redefined negative space in art as a political act, distinguishing itself from architecture by imagining a cure for its most pernicious effects. Gordon Matta-Clark: Moment to Moment offers a comprehensive overview of this courageous and liberating artist with a wealth of documentation and reproductions from across Matta-Clark’s oeuvre, as well as critical commentary from Philip Ursprung, Angela Lammert, Hubertus von Amelunxen, Dan Graham and others.