231 11th Ave
New York, NY 10001
Printed Matter’s first exhibition dedicated to the publishing output of pioneering American artist Gordon Matta-Clark, “New Openings Against Old Surfaces: On Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper,” has been organized as part of the non-profit’s 50th anniversary program. The exhibition offers an in-depth look at Matta-Clark’s 1973 publication Walls Paper, positioning it as an experiment within both the artist’s broader practice and the artists’ book medium at large. Published by Buffalo Press, Walls Paper compiles and abstracts photographs Matta-Clark took of crumbling interior walls inside half-demolished tenement buildings across the South Bronx and Lower East Side, printed in low-contrast black and white and overlaid with hazy neon tones. On view will be rarely seen archival materials, including test prints, uncut printer sheets, documentary photographs, and an original set of prints from the 112 Greene Street installation, along with related publications Splitting (1974) and Circus–The Caribbean Orange (1978), a hand-cut artist’s notebook, and a recreated layout for the unrealized 1973 project Quadrille.