MATTA-CLARK, Gordon; CHATEIGNÉ, Yann; PELEG, Hila; SCOTT, Kitty
CP138 Gordon Matta-Clark: Readings of the archive by Yann Chateigné, Hila Peleg, and Kitty Scott

In mid-1969, Matta-Clark moved to New York City and his early projects involved transformations such as Photo-Fry (1969), Agar (1969-1970), Garbage Wall (1970), and Time Well (1971). He began executing building interventions in 1971 when he cut walls in a loft in New York City to create Sauna (1971) and at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago where he made an untitled wall cutting (1971). Throughout the following years of his major building cuts, Matta-Clark continued to explore other aspects of cities and their structures.

This book unpacks the comprehensive Gordon Matta-Clark collection at the CCA (CP138), opening it up to provisional readings from different points of view. Yann Chateigné reorganizes Matta-Clark’s library into areas of inquiry, from alchemy to psychoanalysis, as a framework for gathering traces⁠—written and drawn⁠—of his thinking. Hila Peleg reassembles hours of discarded film footage, challenging the notion of documentation and returning to view the physical and social contexts⁠—the relational space⁠—of Matta-Clark’s interventions. And from hundreds of travel photographs, Kitty Scott constructs a panorama of Matta-Clark’s visual notes on the world around him⁠—a foil to his artworks.

In foregrounding seemingly incidental parts of the collection, these studies manifest an exploratory way of working with archives, by which selecting, presenting, and writing are processes of ongoing research. Rather than synthesize, CP138 Gordon Matta-Clark: Readings of the archive by Yann Chateigné, Hila Peleg, and Kitty Scott extends the scope of what constitutes Matta-Clark’s body of work and thus the physical and intellectual terrain within which to situate it. [publisher's note]

Published by Koenig Books / Centre Canadien d'Architecture, 2020
Design by Joris Kritis
Monographs / Documents