Gordon Matta-Clark
James Drake
While these works have been seen in Chicago recently, three rarely shown Photoglyphs from 1973 have not been shown in 20 years; they too reveal Matta-Clark’s paradoxical approach to an enveloping “reality.” These startling 30-foot scrolls of photographic paper have between 9 and 11 separate black-and-white images of subway cars printed side by side; Matta-Clark has hand painted many of the graffiti on the cars in their original colors.
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Chicagoan Mary Brogger is exhibiting three 1997 works at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the largest of which is also a photographic scroll. A three-foot-high, 200-foot-long photographic print of her apartment, Homeomorphic snakes around the walls of the L-shaped gallery. Using a computer, Brogger pasted together 35-millimeter photos she took while circling her apartment, making the scroll appear as continuous and seamless as possible. The title–a term for two or more shapes that can be continuously transformed into one another–suggests the way she seeks to connect public and private places: “Mapping the circumference of the artist’s home and stretching it to fit the walls of the museum,” she wrote, “is an act of art that reveals philosophical similarities between the two spaces.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): “Tongue Cut Sparrows” by James Drake; “Homeomorphic” by Mary Brogger.
