Gordon Matta-Clark

* 1943 New York, USA, † 1978 New York, USA

Gordon Matta-Clark was born in New York in 1943, the son of the Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta and his American partner, Anne Clark. He studied architecture at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA, from 1962-68, and French literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, from 1962-63. Because of his radical, socially critical and innovative work, the artist, who died an early death in New York in 1978, still ranks among the most significant personalities of a New York art scene which had begun to spread through the suburb of Soho in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Day’s End
1975, 23:10 min, color, silent, Super 8 film on video, camera: Betsy Susler



Im Mai 1975 arbeitete Gordon Matta-Clark mit drei AssistentInnen zwei Monate in einer aufgelassenen Lagerhalle am Pier 52 am Hudson River in New York. Der Industriestahlbau vom Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts erinnerte ihn an die Proportionen einer Basilika, und er reagierte darauf mit eine Reihe kreisförmiger, einander überlappender Schnitte am Boden, in der Fassade und der Decke, wobei nur einzelne Segmente tatsächlich entfernt wurden. Matta-
Clark wurde wegen dieser Intervention von den Behörden auf Schadenersatz in der Höhe von einer Million Dollar verklagt; die Klage wurde später fallen gelassen. Day’s End, auch genannt Day’s Passing, blieb zwei Jahre bestehen.

In May 1975 Gordon Matta-Clark and three assistants worked for two months in an abandoned store on Pier 52 near the Hudson River in New York. The late nineteenth-century steel industrial building reminded him of the proportions of a basilica, and he reacted to it with a series of circular, overlapping cuts in the floor, the façade, and the ceiling, removing only some of the segments. As a result of this intervention, Matta-Clark was sued by the authorities for damages
amounting to one million dollars; the litigation was later dropped. Day’s End, also called Day’s Passing, existed for two years.

Text: Sabine Breitwieser, Courtesy Generali Foundation.
Illustration: Gordon Matta-Clark, “Day’s End”, 1975.
Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix, New York.