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10/11/2011

Gordon Matta-Clark / Dieter Roth

Museum of Contemporary Art MCA, Chicago

MCA DNA: Gordon Matta-Clark

12 November, 2011 – 4 February, 2012

Part of an ongoing series featuring works that constitute the building blocks of the MCA Collection, MCA DNA: Gordon Matta-Clark presents Circus (alternately titled The Caribbean Orange), the last major project by artist Gordon Matta-Clark (American, 1942–78). In the 1970s, Matta-Clark became known for cutting into abandoned New York buildings to create installations that bridged architecture and sculpture—a practice he called “anarchitecture.” Embracing the artist’s challenging working methods, the MCA invited Matta-Clark to Chicago to create a new work in an adjacent building slated for renovation into additional museum galleries. In February 1978, he created Circus, or The Caribbean Orange by removing large circular forms from the ceilings, walls, and floors, resulting in a “spherical shape along a diagonally ascending axis” that exposed the interior to sun and snow. As planned, this temporary work was covered up with the renovation of the annex.

Circus, or The Caribbean Orange intervened into the building at 235 East Ontario Street using a logic that was difficult to comprehend by merely visiting the installation; the curvilinear progression cut through all four stories so that it was impossible for the viewer to take in the entire work at once. Photography and drawing, therefore, became essential to the project. Having trained as an architect, Matta-Clark made a plan and section that provide the viewer with additional information. Furthermore, rather than using straight photography to document the completed work, he created several color photo montages that strive to convey the experience of the sculptural space, for no single photographic view could begin to capture the whole installation. Similarly, for the exhibition catalogue, Matta-Clark created a series of photo collages in which he attempted to represent some semblance of the work’s reality. In these ways, the site of Circus, or The Caribbean Orange was both a work in itself and a source for the photographic works on view.

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MCA DNA: Dieter Roth

12 November, 2011 – 26 February, 2012

The aesthetic production of German-Icelandic artist Dieter Roth (1930–98) features numerous inventive works of art that blur the lines between artistic media, as well as poetry, music, and literary works. He is also known as a consummate collaborative artist, working famously with British pop artist Richard Hamilton. Although Dieter Roth created paintings, sculptures, videos, and sound and installation works, he is probably most widely known for his artists’ books.

In 1960, the restlessly experimental artist met the Swiss sculptor Jean Tinguely, whose legendary “self-destructing work of art,” Homage to New York, had been staged at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, to great notoriety. Tinguely’s example had a great impact on Roth. Inspired as well by the experiments of Robert Rauschenberg, who combined discarded and salvaged materials, he began creating relatively small editions of publications—now known as artists’ books. Initially Roth fashioned books out of cut-up newspapers and advertising flyers, but soon he was anthologizing materials such as his own drawings and collections of scrap and waste paper. By 1964 Roth had begun a life-long journey not only as a unique and highly innovative artist but also as a traveler, often visiting his great patron, Dr. Ira G. Wool, in Chicago, where Roth made some of the works, including Selbstbildnis as Fletscherberg (Self-portrait as glacier mountain), 1973–77, and many of the altered postcards.on view in this exhibition.

In 1984, the MCA mounted the first major US museum exhibition of work by Dieter Roth, mostly drawn from the Wool collection. Roth was fully involved in the exhibition, selecting works and designing the installation, including suspending the artists’ books on wires, to which the current installation pays homage. The artist was so delighted with the show and the resulting catalogue that he donated what was, at the time, a complete set of his books to the MCA’s newly established Artists’ Books Collection.

While at the heart of the MCA’s holdings are more than 60 of Roth’s books, the collection also features three portfolios of his lithographs—Dogs, Bats, and Trophies—and their accompanying “Speedy” (two-handed) drawings, as well as the Stempelkasten (Rubber Stamp Box), 1968, now considered one of his major works. These holdings are contextualized and augmented by works on loan from the Ira G. Wool collection.

MCA DNA: Dieter Roth is part of an ongoing exhibition series featuring works that constitute the building blocks of the MCA Collection and is organized by Curator Lynne Warren.

Image: Gordon Matta-Clark, Circus or The Caribbean Orange, 1978.
Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, restricted gift of Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Bergman and Susan and Lewis Manilow, 1978.1.a-b.
© Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. Photo © MCA Chicago

Media Relations
Erin Baldwin 312.397.3828 | ebaldwin@mcachicago.org
Karla Loring 312.397.3834 | kloring@mcachicago.org

Preview: November 11th 6 pm

Museum of Contemporary Art
220 East Chicago Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60611-2643
Museum Hours: Tuesday 10 am - 8 pm
Wednesday through Sunday 10 am - 5 pm
Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Day: Closed
Admission is FREE all day on Tuesdays year round

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