Gordon Matta-Clark: Open House

A new publication spotlights Gordon Matta-Clark’s only extant architectural pieceIn 1972, Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–78) installed a dumpster on the street between 98 and 112 Greene Street in New York’s SoHo neighborhood, an architectural artwork he called Open House. Matta-Clark used discarded, scavenged materials—old pieces of wood, doors—to subdivide the space inside the dumpster, creating corridors and small rooms within the container. Dancers and artists moved around the space, their pedestrian movements activating the sculpture and captured in a Super-8 film of the piece. Matta-Clark is best known for his building cuts and architectural interventions. Because of the nature of this work and its context—sited in spaces abandoned or slated for demolition—Matta-Clark’s “anarchitecture” was almost necessarily ephemeral, surviving as only documentation and sculptural sections. Open House (1972) is the only still-extant architectural piece by Matta-Clark. Gordon Matta-Clark: Open House is the first publication to focus on this crucial piece by the artist, using it as a way into his complex body of work. Featuring contributions from Sophie Costes, Thierry Davila and Lydia Yee, this volume takes a historical and theoretical approach to Open House and Matta-Clark’s entire oeuvre.