Flash Art uses cookies strictly necessary for the proper functioning of the website, for its legitimate interest to enhance your online experience and to enable or facilitate communication by electronic means. To learn more about cookies please see Terms & conditions

Flash Art
Flash Art
Shop
  • Home
  • CURRENT ISSUE
  • Features
    • Archive
    • Conversations
    • FOCUS ON
    • On View
    • PARADIGME
    • Reviews
    • Report
    • Studio Scene
    • The Curist
    • Unpack / Reveal / Unleash
  • STUDIOS
    • Dune
    • Flash Art Mono
    • Archive
      • DIGITAL EDITION
      • Shop
      • Subscription
      • INSTITUTIONAL SUBSCRIPTION
      • Contact
→
Flash Art

342 SPRING 2023, Reviews

27 March 2023, 9:00 am CET

Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L “Impossible Failures” 52 Walker / New York by Nina Mdivani

by Nina Mdivani March 27, 2023
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark, Fresh Air Cart, 1974. Courtesy of The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner. © The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark, Untitled (Cut Drawing), 1973. Courtesy of The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner. © The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark, The Wall, 1976/2007. Still form video. Courtesy of The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark and David Zwirner. © The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Pope.L’s studio, 2022. Courtesy the artist and 52 Walker, New York. © Pope.L.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Pope.L, Failure Drawing #1026 Rocket falling, Carrot and Mellon, 2004. Courtesy of the artist and 52 Walker, New York. © Pope.L.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Pope.L, Failure Drawing #184, 2004-2007. Courtesy of the artist and 52 Walker, New York. © Pope.L.

The concept of impossibility changes over time, reflecting larger shifts in consciousness and zeitgeist. What is probable becomes common and therefore devalued; newness arises from breaking the old and working with the remaining shreds. In this thoughtful juxtaposition of two seminal artists, Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L, curated by Ebony L. Haynes at 52 Walker, deconstruction takes on poetic and metaphoric meaning rather than a theoretical version of postmodernism. Failure to bring an idea to fruition does not necessarily constitute a failure of effort; futility may become the end goal precisely for this reason. An ephemerality of material outcome — to which both artists subscribe in the works on view — is in opposition to the age-old commodification of art into objects. Relational aesthetics step in, and the totality of social history is examined through the lenses of anarchy, dismantling, and transformation. One would agree that the disillusioned American society of the 1970s and ’80s needed these different lenses to take a closer look at the status quo; Matta-Clark and Pope.L were pioneers from two subsequent generations who undertook this reexamination. In today’s age of total commodification, dislocation, and disquiet, revisiting their works is refreshing.

Matta-Clark’s approach to deconstructing existing architecture using building fragments, bulldozers, facades, and partitions as source material created a new poetry of dislocation. Looking at the three videos presented at 52 Walker, Matta-Clark’s anarchitecture — his idiosyncratic synthesis of anarchy and architectural norms — is as fresh today as when it was conceived in the mid-1970s. Matta-Clark clearly saw architecture’s embodiment of dominant systems of power as an adversary to be fought with vehemence and irony. His elegant sketches throughout the gallery imply different impossibilities, but they do so with precision and foresight; there is little humor here, just an astute questioning of structure and its limits.

1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Gordon Matta-Clark & Pope.L, “Impossible Failures”. Installation view at 52 Walker, New York, 2023. Courtesy 52 Walker, New York.

Pope.L’s continuous stance has been that of an activist fighting underlying systems of subjection built into urban life. He continues to do so here with a fresh spin, in this case a spinning movement produced within a gigantic site-specific installation called Vigilance a.k.a. Dust Room (2023.) Thousands of plastic particles mingle inside this room without purpose or hindsight. In a way it is a reminder of our own spinning orbits that we would like to see as centered and grounded, yet are at the mercy of a bigger dynamic. Likewise, Pope.L’s previously unseen video Dust Eater a.k.a. White Woman Eating a Donut (2007–09/2022) presents a provocative take on a seemingly mundane fact of existence. The conceptual unravelling of social architectonics is visually presented throughout via circular holes in gallery walls with sawdust still on the floor. Curator and artist are strong collaborators in this space, building on their longstanding professional relationship. Pope.L’s drawings, sketched out on napkins, hotel stationery, and newspapers, evoke phantasmagoric structures. Their eventual completed state is not relevant; a dismantling of the expectations of language is more to the point. As in Louis Althusser’s materialism of encounter, dislocation is an end in itself.

There is a communal element that brings these two artists together, as they would not exist outside of their communities of support and common adversaries. Using different epistemologies and methods, both artists worked against the same normative elements within the dominant system, making equally strong statements relevant to 2023. In this exhibition, failure, or rather the perception of it, becomes a virtue. It is a message we do not often receive within today’s art system.

Share this article
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Mail
More stories by

Nina Mdivani

Dominique White: Of Seas and Shoals

8 March 2023, 9:00 am CET

For Dominique White, the sea is “a huge body, a living and breathing entity, that we don’t really understand.”1 We…

Read More

Resilient Bodies; Enchanted Matter Attuned to Death. A Conversation with Isabelle Andriessen

22 March 2023, 9:00 am CET

Seeping, oozing, metastasizing, Isabelle Andriessen’s bodily sculptures sit in an affective space between categories. They demand to be read through…

Read More

Age of the Femtroll, or the Based It Girl

15 March 2023, 9:00 am CET

The reactionary, provocative, post-ironic It girl has emerged as the most influential figure on the New York art scene. Is…

Read More

Storytelling the History. A Conversation with Cole Lu

30 March 2023, 9:00 am CET

Cole Lu has home on his mind when I call at the end of January. The Brooklyn-based artist is planning…

Read More

  • Next

    Storytelling the History. A Conversation with Cole Lu

  • Previous

    Resilient Bodies; Enchanted Matter Attuned to Death. A Conversation with Isabelle Andriessen

© 2025 Flash Art

  • Terms & conditions
  • Contact
  • Work with Us