Gordon Matta-Clark, Window Blow-Out, 1976
In the less than ten years of his short career, Gordon Matta-Clark’s projects drew attention to abandoned urban properties through controlled destruction. Preparing for the exhibition Idea as Model at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies, Matta-Clark was initially given permission to use an air gun to blow out a few already-cracked windows. Instead, he shot out all the windows of the institute’s building and pasted onto the gaps images of windows broken by residents in the South Bronx that he had taken as part of his Bronx Floors (1971–72) series. This was Window Blow-Out (1976).
The work existed for only a few hours, but Matta-Clark’s blown-out windows opened the symbolic site of academia out towards the reality of the city and the lives of its inhabitants. Researchers note that his method drew attention precisely because it was transgressive and because he could “get away with it” — through his privileged inclusion in the aforementioned exhibition, or by easy entry into the derelict buildings in which he cut out geometrically shaped concrete slabs as part of his “Building cuts” series. The artist himself struggled with the disparity between the attention he drew to the housing crisis and his ability to tackle the issue or lack thereof.
Read more about this project here.
