New Openings Against Old Surfaces: On Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper
Printed Matter is pleased to present New Openings Against Old Surfaces: On Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper, the first exhibition focused specifically on the publishing output of pioneering artist Gordon Matta-Clark, with a particular focus on his project Walls Paper. The show offers an in-depth consideration of the 1973 publication, situating the work as a key experiment within the artist’s diverse and ambitious practice, and with the artists’ book medium at large. The exhibition is organized with the participation of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, with materials drawn from its archives, and the Gordon Matta-Clark collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. On occasion of the exhibition, Printed Matter will realize two newly-created commissions from contemporary artists in dialogue with the legacy of Matta-Clark.
New Openings Against Old Surfaces is presented as part of Printed Matter’s 50th Anniversary programming, connecting the artist’s experimentation in book form to the radical milieu that characterized the time of PM’s founding—and with contemporary artists’ practice today.
Published by Buffalo Press in 1973, Walls Paper gathers and abstracts a series of photographs by Matta-Clark depicting the crumbling interior walls of half-demolished tenement buildings across the South Bronx and Lower East Side. The images are reproduced in low-contrast black and white, and overprinted with hazy neons that likely referenced the patchwork of exposed wallpapering he encountered. The publication—Matta-Clark’s most formally inventive and arguably his one true artists’ book—features newsprint pages that have been bound together and horizontally bisected, effectively creating two distinct booklets in one. Produced at a time of political upheaval and artistic awakening, Walls Paper shares the structural and conceptual daring of the early architectural interventions that Matta-Clark performed in response to the dire conditions of economic crisis, systemic neglect, and widespread urban decay of New York City in the early 1970s.