It's no secret that I'm a big fan of street art. Having lived for so long in San Francisco, I've always loved the fleeting works, even though I abhor vandals.
But before there was street art- there was Gordon Matta-Clark.
His view of condemned construction was for me, a shocking jolt of the haunting beauty inherent in our regions of deteriorating urbanscapes.
Not a surface decorator like today's graffiti, stencil, sticker, or poster guerillas-
Matta-Clark's works were artful demolitions that were introduced to me in my first year of art school. That year would also be, unfortunately, the year after his early and tragic passing. His brief life would yield works that also contained their own abbreviated paths.
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Matta-Clark would become an unparalleled artistic inspiration as I was, myself, beginning to learn what it took to actually build practical objects. I was just new in art school and struggling to get through the myriad of required studies- woodworking, metal-casting, welding etc. Having a small understanding of construction made it even more impressive that Matta-Clark could carefully, almost surgically carve his own openings through a neglected and derelict structure.
Like Richard Serra's monumental steel pieces, Matta-Clarks works held the same quandary for the viewer. Could you trust Gordon Matta-Clark enough to walk through his "undoings" of condemned buildings? He was, after all, a trained Cornell architect. However, unlike Serra's cor-ten steel, little remains of Matta-Clark's structures but photographs and some building segments.
It is probably clear that Gordon Matta-Clark was my first serious art crush. And those are always the ones that stick in your young and impressionable gut. But in fact, the entire sculpture department of my rather macho art school would come to hold all of Gordon's work with unmatched reverence- we all had a crush. His work was up there with all the greatest that have ever been before. And I find it remarkable that to this day- I still look upon his monumental ambitions with the same pause.