From: A Suparak (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Apr 01 2004 - 10:07:18 PST
Gordon Matta-Clark was trained as an architect, as was his father, Surrealist
painter Roberto Matta-Echaurren ("Robert Matta") who studied with Le
Corbusier. Matta encouraged his son to become an architect and to contact his
old friends in the field including Philip Johnson, as detailed in personal
letters on display at The Canadian Centre of Architecture in Montreal (six
hours north of New York City).
I highly recommend the exhibition, "out of the box: price rossi stirling +
matta-clark", up through September 6. As typical with the CCA, the
installation is actually innovative, beautiful, and serves the work well. It
consists of architectural models, photographs, renderings, sketches, films (on
video), documents, and insightful correspondence. I am a huge fan of
Matta-Clark's films and find the technical simplicity effective in relaying
immediacy and wonder.
From the press release:
Intended to launch an innovative experiment, "out of the box: price rossi
stirling + matta-clark", brings the ideas of these four pivotal figures of the
1970s into dialogue, as the public is invited to share the museum’s discovery
of a remarkable group of archives that have recently entered the CCA
collection. Through drawings, sketches, models and texts, an understanding of
the process and development of architectural ideas is made possible. The
exhibition opens on 23 October 2003, and will run through
6 September 2004.
"With this exhibition, CCA presents some of the most provocative and
influential architectural ideas of the 1970s,” says Nicholas Olsberg, CCA
Director. “Drawing from our extensive collection, out of the box continues a
long line of inquiry into CCA archives of late 20th-century architecture,
which has already resulted in important exhibitions on Peter Eisenman and John
Hejduk. Starting from widely diverse premises and points of view, Cedric
Price, Aldo Rossi, James Stirling, and Gordon Matta-Clark each engaged in a
radical rethinking of the status, history, and purpose of architecture. The
positions they assumed in the 1970s urgently call for reassessment, as we move
into a world similarly characterized by a growing sense of uncertainty.”
http://www.cca.qc.ca/pages/communique.asp?com=34&lang=eng
- A. Suparak
Montreal, Quebec and Brooklyn, New York
>>>>>>
At 03:46 PM 3/31/2004, you wrote:
From: konrad <email suppressed>
Subject: Artist films (Gordon Matta-Clark show)
...
This isn't to say that he broke real new ground *for filmmakers*,
but that i'm sorry that he could not have gone on to pursue his
film work, to see what experimental filmmakers were up to, and to
really develop his own insights in the medium. As it was he had
no money to finish these film projects properly, and they only
indicate the direction he seems to have been headed in.
I hope others, esp filmmakers, can have a chance to see the work
all together. It's a great insight into how one artist starts to
transfer knowledge and intuition across media boundaries, but
it's stunning to see how little insight the 'art world' brings to
viewing such crossover work. I think this goes for Cornell's
films too. (Lawrence Jorden spoke at the PFA of how Cornell also
didn't edit like a filmmaker, that he 'arranged' footage after
his fashion, as Matta-Clarke arranged his slices of time).
konrad
^Z
>>>>>>
From: David Woods <email suppressed>
Thank you for that, Konrad. It's unlikely that I'll get to see this
man's (Matta-Clark's) work / life's work; but your response has
...
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For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.