Deidre Adams

Whistle, 48 x 48 inches, oil on canvas, ©2010 Amy Metier.

Palimpsest

Amy Metier at William Havu Gallery through April 10, 2010

1040 Cherokee St.
Denver, Colorado

In her third solo exhibition at the William Havu Gallery, Metier fills the space with exuberant abstractions of objects from her studio, other artist’s studios and recent travels. These shapes are drawn with fluid, gestural lines, wiped away or partially painted over, and redrawn again, inviting the viewer to engage in the painting.¹

I was excited to see this show last week, because Amy is a professor at Metro, and she was the instructor for 3 out of the 5 painting classes I took there. She’s been exhibiting her work nationally and internationally since the mid-1980s, but is especially well known and loved in the Denver area. This is her third solo at Havu. I had seen some of her work in person, and more of it online and in Colorado Abstract, a book by local art critics Michael Paglia and Mary Voelz Chandler published last year. So I was interested to see the new work, some of which is done in new, more muted color palettes. I admire Amy’s fearless approach to painting, with free-spirited brushstrokes which give each piece a lively energy and a sense of rhythm. Placement of colors and shapes seems random, yet logical in the sense that balance is achieved in an organic way. Expressive linework animates the compositions and ties them together.

On Saturday, 60 x 60 inches, oil on canvas, ©2010 Amy Metier

Amy sometimes uses a photo as a starting point, but it’s difficult or impossible to tell what the subject was originally, leaving the viewer free to make a personal interpretation and connection with the work. As many abstract painters do, she maintains a balance between chaos and harmony, and the unexpected color combinations keep the work fresh and exciting.

In the Studio, 72 x 48 inches, oil on canvas, ©2010 Amy Metier

Metier is fully engaged in the push and pull between the representational and the way in which a shape informs abstraction. Her paintings, studies, and works on paper demonstrate an ease in resolving what she has called “that tension between wanting to create an image and not wanting to create an image.”²

The William Havu Gallery is a beautiful space, especially in the late afternoon with the warm golden glow of the sun illuminating the paintings.

Amy also does lovely monotypes and linocuts. I wasn’t able to get any good photos because of the reflections from the glass, but here’s an overall shot of selections from her Harrison Suite, linocut with chine collé.

You can see more of Amy Metier’s work here and here.

¹from William Havu Gallery’s literature

²Colorado Abstract (214)

Parable (working title), 36 x 36 inches. Thread, handmade paper, and acrylic paint on panel. ©2010 Deidre Adams.

I’ve been working more on my paintings in preparation for the thesis show. Although I originally started this series from an idea about the brain and cells and memory and dreams (see A State of Resonance), that’s all kind of fallen by the wayside as I’ve been working more into these paintings. I realized that I’m falling back to my usual way of working, which applies whether I’m working with textiles or painting on panels, or any other medium, and that is a focus on process. I work intuitively, starting with some basic layers of things and responding to them as I go. All of my work is about texture and layering, influenced by the things I’m drawn to visually: crumbling walls, peeling paint, rusty hinges, and marks. There is an inherent aspect of time, as surfaces are changed over time by the environment and by human intervention.

Rereading my earlier words, this seems to be the single most pertinent thing I said in that post:

I’m still working with texture, because after so many years of working with textiles, I’ve developed an inseparable connection with the tactile nature of materials. Besides the visual texture imparted by the lines, shapes, colors and markings in this work, I’m also using thread, string, fragments of handmade paper, and other embedded objects to impart elements of physical texture to the surface. I’m still very interested in creating a sense of depth and layering here, in an attempt to create an illusion that you are moving into the piece.

In the BFA thesis class, we spend a lot of time working on our statements. The thesis statement is distinguished from the artist’s statement in a couple of ways, the most notable of which seems to me to be that it’s a lot longer and therefore full of more pontificating and “artspeak.” In attending past senior thesis shows and trying to read the statements, I’ve found that in most cases they were way too long and my mind would start wandering before I could get through the whole thing. A lot of them sound like they’re just regurgitating a bunch of theory to score points.

In writing mine, I’m trying to be as honest as possible without sounding overly academic and pompous. On the other hand, I do want to make an effort to go along with the system to a certain extent, basically so I can get a good grade. Here’s the part where I’m having difficulty. We are supposed to name a couple of influences, and each named influence must be visible in the work. I mention wabi-sabi, as the idea of finding beauty in the impermanent and the imperfect is very influential, but they also want some actual art movements and/or specific artists named.

Now I have a lot of artists in mind whose work I admire: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Robert Ryman, Eva Hesse, Gordon Matta-Clark, Susan Rothenberg, Wayne Thiebaud, Richard Diebenkorn, plus many more contemporary painters, textile artists, and photographers. But there is not a single one that I looked at and said, “I want to make work like that.” So I’m going about this in a rather backwards way, I suppose. I’m paging through all my Art in America and ARTnews magazines and a bunch of books to find something that looks similar or has a similar intent. Can’t really find anything terribly appropriate. For lack of a better idea right now, I guess I’m going to go with Abstract Expressionism, since the look of my work is somewhat similar to some of the gestural painters, although I think my philosophy of working doesn’t really fit. (Emotional intensity and self-denial? I hardly think so.) I’m open to suggestions.

One other note, specifically on the painting above. I first did this one last semester, but I wasn’t really satisfied with it in its original incarnation. Then, after I got a comment that it looked like an image of a nebula taken from the Hubble telescope, I realized that was pretty far off my intention. Here’s what it looked like before the rework:

Well, that color really was too wild, and even though a certain person is disappointed about it, I like the new version quite a bit better. I’m in charge here, after all!

Untitled, 12 x 12 inches, acrylic on panel, ©2009 Deidre Adams.

In my last post, I discussed my angst over having to finally settle on what kind of work I wanted to have in my Thesis/Portfolio show. A few days later, our class went to visit the site to get an idea of what the space looks like. While looking at one large wall, I got a flash of how cool it would be to have some very large textile pieces in the show. As I waited for everyone else to be finished with their mildly excited chattering and general milling around, I had a little daydream which in short order included a very clear vision of making (5) 6×4-foot pieces to be set close together, making a single statement. (Wikipedia asserts that that would be a “pentaptych,” but such an ungainly word shall have no place in my permanent working vocabulary.)

The textures, colors, and methods were all surprisingly well developed in my little reverie, and I started to make my plan a reality the very next day. I cut backs and batting pieces, and I went to the basement to go through all my old stash of random types of fabric, looking for those piles of silk scraps from the designer clothing castoff sales and the old silk blouses and shirts from Goodwill that I had once accumulated for some now long-lost idea. I spent many hours of every day of the following week cutting, tearing, ironing, painting, arranging, and basting to get my first piece, a prototype of sorts, somewhat in shape to continue. But I had only begun to put in some of the first, tentative stitches — some by hand, and some by machine. The reality of whether I would be able to complete 5 of these pieces by mid-April was seriously in doubt at this point.

Over this past weekend, I met with some friends and showed them my prototype as well as a couple of the Resonant State paintings. Granted, it’s very hard for others to get enthusiastic and be able to have a clear picture of your finished piece when they’re looking at something that’s just a bunch of scraps basted onto a backing, but the consensus was unambiguous: go with the paintings. After all, they’re pretty much done, save for some minor tweaking, so why spend the next couple of months in a state of extreme anxiety when there’s no need for that? If I really think about it, one of the biggest reasons I make art is because I find it immensely therapeutic, relaxing, and satisfying. Rushing to get something done for the sake of a deadline is antithetical to my process.

I had to admit I felt a great sense of relief once I began to let go of my new idea, even though it was, and still is, very precious to me. I’m still going to continue with these pieces in the future when the time is right. In a way, this is even better. I have all of the raw materials plus one piece pretty far along, neatly stored away for the future like a squirrel with a big pile of nuts. With this plus all the other ideas I have ready and waiting in the wings, I’ll never be stuck staring at the wall, wondering what I should work on. For me, this is better than money in the bank.

Kitchen, 36 x 36 inches, acrylic & oil on canvas, ©2007 Deidre Adams

Last Friday was the first day of my last semester in the BFA program at Metro. I’m only taking one class:

ART 4701 – Snr Exp Studio: Portfolio Devl
This studio course requires the student to present finished work in a senior thesis show, produce a slide and/or CD portfolio, and write a concise statement about the intention, and methodology of producing the body of work. This effort will result in the production of a body of work as well as an introduction to the profession of the studio artist.

AKA “BFA Thesis & Portfolio,” this is the class where we wrap it all up, tying together everything we’ve learned, and get pushed out of the nest to sink or swim. (Sorry – couldn’t resist the mixed metaphor.) A major effort of the class involves figuring out what our art is about so that we can write our BFA thesis statements.

By now, it seems we are expected to have settled on a particular media and theme that we want to pursue to the exclusion of all others. This idea is reinforced by the art world in general and the gallery system in particular: once you become known for doing a particular thing, major changes to your style and methods are done at your own peril. Society likes to be able to neatly categorize things, and if you want to sell your work, you need to figure out which box you can be put into.

For me, this whole system is fraught with angst. I’m interested in a wide range of themes — place, time, language, politics, social issues, technology — and I love working with different media — textiles, painting, photography, printmaking, and collage. If I had to choose just one from each column and work only in that way for the rest of my life, it would seriously curtail my interest in making art.

A long time ago, during the course of earning my first degree, I remember learning about the concept of  “opportunity cost” — probably in Econ 101 or some other finance-oriented class. Opportunity cost is “The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action” (Investopedia). It applies to investing because by choosing to put your money into one stock, you have an associated opportunity cost, which is giving up the chance to make money by investing in something else. The idea really struck me, I suppose, because it occurs to me frequently when thinking about what kind of art I want to be making. For instance, if I choose to work on paintings on panels, the opportunity cost is the time I could have spent making textile work. (Or time I could have spent working on my web site or pursuing exhibition opportunities … but I guess I shouldn’t muddy the waters too much.) The opportunity cost of writing this blog post is the time I should be using to complete my assignment that’s due in class tomorrow.

Last night the idea hit me again vividly when I was making salads for dinner.

When I cut into this beautifully formed Roma tomato, I had a strong, visceral impulse: I wanted to immediately drop everything I was doing and start working on a series of huge, close-focus paintings of sliced vegetables. But my inner arbiter of common sense quickly intervened and reminded me that that would be utterly ridiculous. There would be a huge opportunity cost associated with that: I’d be giving up all the time I need to work on the things I’m currently doing.

That’s been one of the very enjoyable luxuries of school — freedom to experiment and try lots of different things without having to feel that I was giving up something. The painting at the top of this post is a good example. It was done in my Painting II class in 2007. I don’t remember exactly what the assignment was, but I know it had something to do with interiors and Cubism. I remember that I enjoyed making this painting immensely, and I would love to make several more in a series of them. But would it really make sense to do that when I also have a strong desire to make more textile work, and in fact have started on a new series in that medum? And when I am simultaneously thinking about my Resonant State series, which was to have been the work for my BFA thesis? (I say “was to have been” because now I’m wavering once again about whether I should really try to incorporate textile work into my thesis.)

Thank goodness we’re doing all this contemplation and introspection in class. I’m more confused than ever.

Suspension. 22 x 30 inches. Watercolor and acrylic on handmade paper.
©2009 Deidre Adams

Sometimes when visiting Mexico or Florida or southern California, the thought has crossed my mind that it would be so awesome to live in a place where you have lush foliage and bright colors surrounding you all the time. But when I get home to Colorado, I realize how much I love the rhythm of the change of seasons, and how each time of the year has its own appeal. I think winter may be the least appreciated of the seasons, but I love the quiet and the muted colors of this time of year. You may have to look a little harder, but the beauty is there in the landscape, just in a more subtle way. This painting is a celebration of winter hues.

(Suspension is available through Translations Gallery in Denver.)

Precognition. 22 x 30 inches. Watercolor, acrylic, and photo transfer on handmade paper.
©2009 Deidre Adams

Something I’ve wanted to do since starting this blog two years ago was get into the habit of posting on a regular basis. But I still have this idea that in order for a post to be worthwhile, I need to have some kind of meaningful content to impart, which often turns out to be self-defeating. Right now I just want to post some work that I did last year and never got around to showing. That was, after all, the main reason I wanted to blog: to have a way to quickly and easily get my work onto the web. So, no words of wisdom, no lengthy blather today. I’m sure that will come as a relief to many!

(Precognition is available through Translations Gallery in Denver.)

Resonant State No. 5, 36 x 36 inches, ©Deidre Adams

New Year’s Day is one of my favorite days of the year. All of the hoopla and frenzied compulsive consumption associated with the holiday season is now officially over. Nothing left now but a bright new start, a clean slate full of hope and quiet promise.

I find myself reflecting on how fortunate I’ve been, not just this past year but for a long time, for family and friends and health and art. I don’t make resolutions, and I don’t make laundry lists of achievements and failures. I just want to be and to do. It could be a great day to go and clean up the studio, preparing myself for all the great art I’m going to make in the coming weeks (she said only somewhat self-mockingly). I could go out and do some photography, or I could go shopping. Did you know that “Is Costco open on New Year’s Day” was the 7th most popular Google search when I happened to try it this morning? Well, thankfully the answer is no, so there goes that idea. Still, the day is open to infinite possibility.

Whether you prefer to spend the day taking stock of where you are and where you want to be, or if like me, you just want to enjoy each moment as it comes, I wish you a very happy new year, with much joy and success, and the ability to recognize them in their many forms.

Resonant State No. 1, 24 x 24 inches, ©Deidre Adams

Do you ever get the feeling that life isn’t always as random as we might think? I had yet another experience today that goes into the category of amazing coincidence.

Last week, I wrote about my Entangled Series, the first group of pieces that I did for my Painting V class. Making these pieces was a cathartic experience for me, but they were also extremely time-consuming. While it was OK that I had to spend pretty much every minute of my time not taken up with other obligations working on them, I knew that work in my other classes was going to start demanding way more time and attention, and I needed to find a way to do the work faster. So I decided to go back to painting.

By now I think I’ve worked something out of my system, so even though I started out this second series still thinking about entanglement, the work evolved into something different as I progressed. I’m still thinking about the processes of the brain, but now it’s more general. I’ve been doing a lot of research on neuroscience, at least insofar as I can understand it because it can very quickly become “science-y” beyond the point that I’m willing to pursue it. I have a basic understanding of neurons, synapses, axons, and dendrites, but what I find immensely fascinating is that science still doesn’t have a clear understanding of how all these physical structures lead to the phenomena of language and memory, perceptions and emotions, consciousness and dreams, and ultimately becomes an awareness of self. This is what I’m trying to explore in these paintings.

I’m still working with texture, because after so many years of working with textiles, I’ve developed an inseparable connection with the tactile nature of materials. Besides the visual texture imparted by the lines, shapes, colors and markings in this work, I’m also using thread, string, fragments of handmade paper, and other embedded objects to impart elements of physical texture to the surface. I’m still very interested in creating a sense of depth and layering here, in an attempt to create an illusion that you are moving into the piece.

Resonant State No. 1, detail, ©Deidre Adams

Today, I was in the process of writing this blog entry on the next group of pieces, when something arrived in the mail which helped to solidify my ideas about what I’m trying to say with these pieces: the December ’09 issue of Discover Magazine. Now as far as I know, we do not have a subscription to this magazine (although it could very well turn out that a family member is giving us a gift subscription for Christmas), and I’ve never read it before in my life. But it looked interesting, so I thumbed through it, and right there on page 61 is a fantastic article about Henry Markram and the Blue Brain project. The project is an attempt to simulate a human brain with computers, reverse engineering what we know and “building tools to synthesize those data into biological phenomena.” In its current state, the project is running on the IBM Blue Gene®/P, a supercomputer consisting of “16,000 processors squeezed into a space the size of four refrigerators.”

The article is fascinating and I highly recommend it. I won’t go into it in too much depth, except for the part that really sparked my recognition of how this applies to my work. In answer to a question about what they’ve learned so far with the project, Markham talks about the phenomenon of “gamma oscillations,” a rhythm of electrical activity that appeared spontaneously in the circuit. He explains further:

Gamma oscillations are the basis for consciousness, according to a theory. The theory holds that when the brain goes into high-frequency oscillations, those oscillations do perceptual binding, which is the foundation of consciousness. … It’s significant that we didn’t specifically try to model the phenomenon in the brain. All we have to do is pay attention to the fact that we are building it correctly, and these phenomena emerge. The whole circuit goes into this resonant state, which is an amazing state. Now we can dissect the circuit and find out exactly which neurons were crucial, which pathways, which receptors, and so forth.

I love the idea of the “resonant state,” as I think this has multiple meanings applicable to thoughts, memory and the making of art in and of itself. Here are the other paintings in the series:

Resonant State No. 2, 24 x 24 inches, ©Deidre Adams

Resonant State No. 3, 24 x 24 inches, ©Deidre Adams

Resonant State No. 4, 24 x 24 inches, ©Deidre Adams

Entangled II, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

Now that school is just about over, I thought I would start posting some of the work that I’ve been doing this semester. Besides the Art Theory & Criticism class, I had two studio classes, Painting V and Printmaking II: Lithography. I’ll start with Painting.

Painting V is the last level of painting that Metro offers, and it is the time when students are expected to be hard at work developing their body of work for the all-important thesis/portfolio show. At this time, we’re expected to be pretty much self-driven, choosing what we want to work on, developing our own proposals, and being given little direction other than feedback on the proposal and the work itself, both in progress and finished. It was a stacked class, meaning that the instructor had another class to deal with simultaneously and so was stretched pretty thin trying to get around to everybody. (Not surprising with budget cuts across the board, but who knows how much worse it will get before it gets better!)

As usual, I struggled to figure out what I wanted to go with for my concept. It’s not that I don’t have any ideas, it’s just the opposite. I have too many, and I feel such affection for each of them, it’s hard to settle on a single one. I went through a couple of false starts before I finally settled on this one idea. It’s something that’s been rolling around in my mind for a long time, but I never could figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it. Part of the problem is that as a highly introverted individual, I’ve always shied away from making work that is too personal, choosing for the most part to concentrate on formal elements and/or safe choices that won’t reveal too much of myself to the world. When my mother died four years ago, someone close to me suggested to me that I should do a piece about it, to allow me to work out my feelings. No, I said, I could never do that. I wasn’t even fully capable of confronting those feelings directly; it was better to keep it all at a safe distance.

Without saying a whole lot more about it, the important thing to convey is that about 4-5 years before she died, my mother began to exhibit signs that something wasn’t quite right in her mind. She was forgetting things, losing things, saying things that made no sense, sometimes displaying irrational fears about things that no one else could see. By the time she died, she didn’t know who I was any longer, but I think from some of the things she said, she might have been confusing me with her older sister.

While I was thinking over ideas for my concept, mulling thoughts about patterns and textures in nature and science, my dad had an accident and went into the hospital. I went down to Albuquerque to see him and deal with anything that needed my assistance. While there, I stayed in my parent’s house, which always makes me think a lot about my mother. I also think about how the things I experienced growing up might have looked from her perspective, how differently those same incidents and conversations would have appeared through her eyes. I think about what she might have been like as a child and a young woman, what kind of hopes and dreams she may have had that never materialized as she continued down the path she ended up choosing.

When I got back home, something I saw, I don’t even know what now, sparked the idea of trying to tie together her experiences with the physical changes that occur in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease. I did a lot of research so I could understand the science of it. Neurons, the nerve cells which transmit brain activity, die when the proteins which are normally broken down and eliminated by the body instead become reformed into hard, insoluble plaques. Microtubules, the brain’s cellular transport system, break down abnormally and the proteins released reform into insoluble twisted fibers called tangles. As these cells die, the brain shrinks. Ventricles, the chambers containing cerebrospinal fluid, become enlarged.

Having seen the outward manifestations of these changes, I visualize the thoughts inside the person’s head becoming trapped: twisted, tangled, and cut off from their normal pathways by these cells and obstructing formations. An idea tries to make its way to a familiar connecting point, but it’s either stopped completely or diverted to a place it’s not supposed to go.

I wanted to use fibers and thread to express my concept, both because I love using them and because these materials seemed like a natural fit to express the concept of entanglement. As more and more thread is added, the surface becomes at once more complex and more unified. The idea is not a literal representation of brain cells, but rather a depiction of how the strangulation of the sending and receiving cells means they can no longer function as they should.

Entangled I, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

These originally started out as strictly fiber works, but the shapes were very wonky and I couldn’t figure out how I would hang them. I also knew I would need several more pieces in the series, especially since these two were so different. I would need to make more pieces with bridging elements to make everything work together as a single exhibit. So I came up with the idea of making a grid of 24-inch squares, and to that end I ended up stitching these pieces to stretched canvas.

I also started a third piece, but since these are extremely time-consuming, I didn’t get this one to a satisfactory state before the due date. I’m not even sure if I want to keep going with it. For now, it’s a UFO (unfinished object).

Entangled III, 24 x 24 inches, ©2009 Deidre Adams

Gordon Matta-Clark, Splitting, 1974

Completion through removal. Abstractions of surfaces. Not-building, not-to-rebuild, not-built-space. Creating spatial complexity, reading new openings against old surfaces. Light admitted into space or beyond surfaces that are cut. Breaking and entering. Approaching structural collapse, separating the parts at the point of collapse.
— Gordon Matta-Clark, 1971

I’ve just spent a couple of weeks researching the work of Gordon Matta-Clark for a paper for my Art Theory & Criticism class this semester. The assignment was to choose an artist and/or specific work to tie in with some of the theories we had been discussing in our readings. Deconstruction theory* is very interesting to me, so I started with a Google search on that term and came up with Gordon Matta-Clark. As soon as I saw the images that came up, I remembered having seen a slide of his work in an earlier art history class. The slide we saw was from his work Bingo, in which he cut out sections from the side of an old condemned house. Some of these sections were saved, and this slide shows them placed in a pristine museum setting — a striking contrast of particular interest for me because I find abandoned structures so compelling.

Gordon Matta-Clark was quite an interesting guy. He was the son of two artists — Chilean surrealist painter Roberto Matta and American artist Anne Clark. Marcel Duchamp was his godfather. He was active during the early 70s and died an untimely death from cancer when he was only 35. His work is somewhat difficult to categorize, consisting of elements of sculpture, drawing, film, performance, social activism, and “semantic deconstruction,” a label applied to his fondness for word play in his documentation.

His most well-known works are probably those often referred to as the “building cuts.” The earliest works involving cutting of buildings were “urban guerilla acts” in which he illegally entered abandoned apartment buildings and cut out parts of what would have been a floor on one level and a ceiling for the level below. These cut-out fragments were displayed in a gallery setting as Bronx Floors.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Bronx Floors, 1972-73

As he gained notoriety, Matta-Clark was able to gain legal access to various condemned structures in order to perform his interventions. Splitting (top) is probably his most iconic work, consisting of a house which he cut completely in half. He and his collaborators were able to remove part of the foundation on one side so that the affected half tilted back and transformed the opening into a dramatic wedge, widening from bottom to top.

Matta-Clark was interested in the social aspects of how abandonment and urban renewal would affect and displace communities. His ideas about consumerism and capitalism seemed to be taken almost directly from the Situationists: the concepts of psychogeography, dérive, and détournement. In explaining his “dualistic habit of centering and removal,” he said,

Here I am directing my attention to the central void, to the gap which, among other things, could be between the self and the American Capitalist system. What I am talking about is a very real, carefully sustained mass schizophrenia in which our individual perceptions are constantly being subverted by industrially controlled media, markets, and corporate interests. … This conspiracy goes on every day, everywhere, while the citizen commutes to and from his shoe-box home with its air of peace and calm, while he is being precisely maintained in a state of mass insanity.[i]

Matta-Clark was trained as an architect, having received a B.A. in architecture from Cornell University in 1968. But he spent a lot of time in the company of artists while in college, and he expressed some disaffection with the field of architecture, and especially with the type of modernist ideas he encountered there. After leaving Cornell, Matta-Clark moved to New York City, to an area now known as SoHo but which was then called the South Houston Industrial area. At that time, the area was in a state of decline, a prime example of urban decay, with numerous abandoned buildings and streets lacking lighting and maintenance. Since the 1950s, artists had been attracted to the area for the cheap rents, living illegally in buildings zoned for commercial, not residential use. In the late 1960s, the city’s urban planners and wealthy landowners wanted to transform the area into a modern corporate and financial center, an idea which was met with no small resistance by the inhabitants.

At this time, much of Matta-Clark’s work involved a spirit of community, calling attention to the plight of the poor and homeless and involving neighbors and other artists in the work’s creation. He had several ideas for making building materials from discarded bottles and other trash, with thoughts of developing some of these ideas into places for the homeless to live.[ii] He explained his motivation:

As a native New Yorker my sense of the city as home runs deep … [and] my attitudes are still keener as regards an awareness of prevailing conditions and their need for improvement. Among the conditions my training and personal inclination have taught me to deal with is neglect and abandonment. There are words which when applied to children or human beings of any age evoke a profound call for alarm and rectification, yet when existing in massive proportions throughout our urban environment evokes only bureaucratic or juridic ambivalence and in-action.[iii]

Matta-Clark’s ideas about the social content of his work grew clearer to him as he progressed in his career. In a 1976 interview with Donald Wall, after he had done several building-cut projects, he reiterated his commitment to fighting against what he saw as a flawed system:

By undoing a building there are many aspects of the social conditions against which I am gesturing: first, to open a state of enclosure which had been preconditioned not only by physical necessity but by the industry that profligates suburban and urban boxes as a context for insuring a passive, isolated consumer—a virtually captive audience.[iv]

In 1975, Matta-Clark began work on Conical Intersect, one of his more complex building interventions. In Paris at this time, the old section of the city known as Les Halles was being demolished to make way for modernization, including the building of the then-controversial Centre Georges Pompidou. Matta-Clark obtained permission to work on two 17th-century houses that were the last to be demolished to make way for the modernization project.

Gordon Matta-Clark, Conical Intersect, 1975

Having been to the Pompidou myself last summer, I found this especially interesting. The pictures are fascinating, but how amazingly cool it would have been to be able to experience this first-hand. These works could only exist, and for only a short time, because they would subsequently be destroyed. All that remains are photographs and film of the process.

Interior view of Conical Intersect

I can’t help feeling nostalgic when older buildings are demolished to make way for the new. I know that’s a kind of sentimental attitude, and we must have progress and all that, but I just like the character of old buildings better than new ones. If I never saw what was there before, of course I couldn’t give that too much thought, but Gordon Matta-Clark did want people to think about that, and that’s why I love his work so much.

_______________

*Deconstruction is a literary theory credited to Jacques Derrida, who is maddeningly difficult to read. I found a very understandable explanation of deconstruction in Literary Theory for the Perplexed by Mary Klages. (Wow – Amazon seriously wants $132 for this book? Good thing we have libraries!)

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[i]Gordon Matta-Clark, Interview by Donald Wall, 1976, in “Gordon Matta-Clark’s Building Dissections,” in Gordon Matta-Clark: Works and Collected Writings, ed. Gloria Moure (Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa, 2006), 58.

[ii]Christian, Scheidemann, “Material and Process: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Object Legacy, in Gordon Matta Clark: You are the Measure. Exhibition catalog published by the Whitney Museum of American Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 119.

[iii]Gordon Matta-Clark, notes from the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, quoted in Judith Russi-Kirchner, “The Idea of Community in the Work of Gordon Matta-Clark,” in Gordon Matta-Clark, ed. Corinne Diserens (London: Phaidon Press Limited, 2003), 148.

[iv]Matta-Clark, Wall interview, 57.