TROPOLISM

The Times helpfully points us in the direction of shows related to Gordon Matta-Clark's work Fake Estates. The reporting on the leftover tax bills is particularly amusing, along with some insights into what we might learn of the artist's work today.

Tropolism has barely touched on one of its primary sources of inspiration. Gordon Matta-Clark's life and work were the very model of a youthful aspiration not based on selling stuff (also known as the art business), while not unduly divorced from making things. The parallel to architecture is obvious to us, abetted by Matta-Clark's projects cutting buildings. He worked on buildings precisely because architecture is the access to the unconsious, because they are both form and background environment. His work embodies a chaotic balance between love of urbanism and skepticism about design culture. His work is not about complaining. His writing makes no sense, gorgeously so.

Don't be so surprise that I haven't mentioned him. The fact that he pissed Peter Eisenman off when he shot out the windows at a show with the New York Five should have been a dead giveaway.

Greg, the artwork you're looking for is called "Food", 1971, corner of Prince and Wooster, Soho. Run by Gordon Matta-Clark, Carol Gooden, and someone whose name I cannot remember (Tropolism's fact checker left my copy of the book about Food at home).

There is an interesting memoir here. However, more to Greg's interest, this piece touches on the impact Food had on the emergence of what became artist-Soho (pre-retail-Soho), as well as the fact that Food was an implicit critique of the displacement of manufacturing by the artists' lofts.

Of course, those days are long over in Manhattan. That's a fact, not a complaint. Tropolism embraces urban change, so you won't see us shedding tears for the long-lost oldene timey days when living in a leaky Soho loft was considered the Golden Age.

Back from the dead: Robert Smithson's project "Floating Island To Travel Around Manhattan" is set to begin, er, floating around Manhattan September 17th through the 25th.

We choose to set aside issues of authorship (so 70s) and history (80s) and craft (90s) by creating from scratch a project by a long-dead artist who developped projects while they were being made (or bulldozed, same diff). We just bow to the interest posed by the object itself. Architects are fundamenatally formalists, after all. If it exists, it exists. Om. A floating island around Manhattan is cool. It is a lovely reminder that Manhattan is a machine itself, with a few trees thrown in for good measure.

What I want to know: can we catch a ride?

David Shrigley, which is like Robert Smithson, but with a lot less thinking. Smithson is my favorite artist, but there's something more free about Shrigley. Calmer, less directed, easier to access, easier to contemplate for long periods.

(Thanks to Boozhy)

Deitch Projects has two shows which are bringing the city inside. Swoon and Barry McGee both have large installations in the two SoHo locations.

What makes projects like this of interest to architects, particularly architects like myself who work with artists, and who design the spaces artists will work in, is how they bring the street indoors.

The Swoon work is fresh and gorgeous, but I want to see her rip open the walls, not take the white box as an outer limit. I want to see her rummaging occur now, not as something wallpapered or brought into the space. This is a ridiculous observation, though. Her work is concerned with flattening the motion of the street, not about re-creating it. She does not want to be Matta-Clark. And in the name of our life and safety (which is why I have a license, because I think about these things), we are probably better off for it.

Barry McGee's work has always played with elements of abstraction and absurd comic-book illos. The work in this show is exploring that language even further, without giving too much ground to the gallery/museum setting.

Both installations take advantage of the gallery to freeze our street impressions, allowing us to observe and enjoy moments of movement, color, attraction, and madness.

NYT: Urban Outsider Artists Evoke Society's Margins

Architects on Art? Is that allowed on school property?

We here at Whatever Our Site Is To Be Named are always looking for artistic actions that are neither Art nor Architecture. Which is why we found this postcard a bit alarming. And misleading: the verso of the card announces that CIMA is having their annual auction, and an artist is lecturing. So it's "Architects buy Art", or "Artist on Architecture".

The event and postcard are tidily reproduced at CIMA's website.

I was totally kidding about the Winka part. The resemblance is striking, isn't it?

Vito Acconci is lecturing tonigth, at 7pm, at The Accompanied Library, The national Arts Club, 15 Gramercy Park South, 6th Floor. RSVP (like you were invited, whatevah) info@interboropartners.com because seating is limited. He'll be lecturing on current projects, including the building facade above.

Olafur takes over a residence and edits out most of LA from a house made to view LA. I've had the honor of working with Olafur, and hearing him present his projects to potential clients. In addition to the idea of inverting the expansiveness of the Southern California landscape by creating light-stages for his sculptures, I think there's a little joke in there about leaving enough of LA to make the view enjoyable.

Via arcspace via Greg Allen