ART CITIES: N.York -Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L

The exhibition “Impossible Failures” is pairing the work of the site-specific artist Gordon Matta-Clark and the visual artist Pope.L., the exhibition is an examination of the two artists’ careers—specifically, their shared fixations on the problematic nature of institutions, language, scale, and value. The exhibition is a collaboration of two Galleries: David Zwirner and Mitchell-Innes & Nash.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: 52 Walker Archive

Matta-Clark and Pope.L are known for their respective interdisciplinary practices that examine the value and paradoxes of urban life as well as the risk inherent in art making. Through performance, film, drawing, and various multimedia projects, the two artists often opened up interstitial spaces by realizing sweeping gestures that take into account shifting, decentralized zones. Embracing the wide-ranging opportunities afforded by concepts around failure—and in their expression a consideration for hope—the two artists employed existing languages and systems to envision wholly original ideas that seemed absurd or unfathomable in order to expose standards and structures, and more importantly how playing with and within those systems considers what is newly possible. “Impossible Failures” juxtaposes a group of Pope.L’s ”Failure Drawings” (initiated in 2003), which the artist creates on found materials when he is in transit, with conceptual sketches by Matta-Clark that conceive of and illustrate seemingly impossible ideas. Projected across the expansive walls of the space, Matta-Clark’s iconic “Conical Intersect” (1975) is shown with “Bingo X Ninths” (1974) and “The Wall” (1976/2007), in addition to a never-before-seen film by Pope.L that similarly suggests the act of destruction while obliterating it. In the center of the gallery, Pope.L created a new site-specific installation, “Vigilance a.k.a Dust Room” (2023). Together, the works on view suggest affinities in the two artists’ deliberate choice to visualize failure and the ample possibilities that result from welcoming the unknown.

Since the 1970s, Pope.L has pursued a dynamic multidisciplinary practice that has since shifted the paradigm of performance and installation art. As an MFA student at Rutgers University, he became known for his work Times Square Crawl (1978), which involved the artist dragging his body while on his hands and knees on West 42nd Street in Manhattan. Pope.L’s performance and subsequent “crawls” brought attention to those who were often made invisible in public spaces. Throughout his career as an artist and educator, he has continued to evaluate the limits of the body, identity, language, and personhood by irreverently manipulating form and content as well as revealing how these constructs are established and reified. A central figure of the downtown New York art scene in the 1970s, Gordon Matta-Clark pioneered a radical approach to art making that directly engaged the urban environment and the communities within it. Through his many projects—including large-scale architectural interventions in which he physically cut through buildings slated for demolition—Matta-Clark developed a singular and prodigious oeuvre that critically examined the structures of the built environment. With actions and experimentations across a wide range of media, his work transcended the genres of performance, conceptual, process, and land art, making him one of the most innovative and influential artists of his generation.

Info: Curator: Ebony L. Haynes, David Zwirner Gallery, 52 Walker St., New York, NY, USA, Duration: 3/2-1/4/2023, Days & Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat 10: -18:00m Thu: 12:00-20:00, https://www.52walker.com/