Gordon Matta-Clark's Splitting at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art 

• Florent Bex

In 1974, artist Gordon Matta-Clark set to work on a performance art piece. He took his chainsaw to an abandoned house in New Jersey and carefully, deliberately, cut the home down the middle. Once that was finished, he chiseled away at the foundation until one half of the bisected structure tilted out, leaving the home cracked open like a book.

"The way that I'd think about [Gordon Matta-Clark's] work, or the way that I'd describe his work, is that he considers architecture sculpture," says UMOCA Curator of Exhibitions Jared Steffensen. "He really uses architecture as a material to make sculptures."

While that house in New Jersey has long since been demolished, viewers can currently experience the art via the short film Splitting, on display at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art through July 15. The film documents the process of Matta-Clark creating this large-scale work.

Matta-Clark was part of an artistic movement that took art out of galleries and museums and into the world. While it may consequently feel at odds to now view Matta-Clark's work at a museum, Steffensen believes it's an opportunity to more fully understand the artist's perspective: "There's something interesting about seeing an artist work through something on that scale, and to see what that process would have been like." In the film, Matta-Clark is not putting brush to canvas or hands to clay in the fashion of a stereotypical artist. Instead, he looks more like a construction worker. His personality comes through in the film, Steffensen says, which "shows how guerilla [the process] ended up being."

However, even with all that in mind, the film remains a document of an artwork, not the artwork itself. At a contemporary art museum, this historic piece of work might feel out of place, especially considering that Gordon Matta-Clark's career ended so long ago (he died from pancreatic cancer in 1978, when he was just 35 years old). What is there to gain from viewing a vestige of artwork that existed for such a short while, such a long time ago?

The film shows a fleeting piece of art, but Steffensen says it can come back to "home being somewhat ephemeral or liminal for some people." Gordon Matta-Clark began his career in one of the most tumultuous ages in American History: the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steffensen says that much of Matta-Clark's work pertains to "this sort of post World-War-II idea of home or community... In the '70s, those ideas are starting to shift." Matta-Clark's work was a critique of urban renewal, and he used the condemned and abandoned properties that were a result of that movement.

For Steffensen, this is where the work becomes extremely relevant today, as cultural ideas about home are shifting once more. "There's a lot of changes that are happening to Downtown Salt Lake that are really affecting people and how they live in this space and where they live in this space," he said. Many people in Salt Lake City have found themselves pushed out of their homes in the past few years. In addition to the cost of housing increase throughout Utah, the closing of the Rio Grande area Road Home shelter in 2020 has created a shortage of spaces for unhoused people, whose struggles are compounded by consistent police sweeps and the current moratorium on new shelters in Salt Lake City.

"Where do they go now?" says Steffensen, referring to those pushed out of downtown Salt Lake City. "How do they find community, and how do they find a home?" That question, he says, is where he sees a connection between Salt Lake City residents and Splitting. In the 1970s, Matta-Clark "was being critical of suburbs and isolation" with his artwork, Steffensen says, "but I think those things can apply now to what is happening in downtown areas."

Additionally, these ideas have been amplified due to the pandemic, as stay-at-home orders have made the idea of home more abstract for many. The concept of home is watered down when it also serves as a workplace, a school and a daycare; community has to expand beyond geographical boundaries when families are, by necessity, staying within the isolated box of their homes.

Splitting serves as a start to the conversation. Looking into the split-open house, it's clear that this structure is just a building, and that the concept of "home" exists elsewhere. These ideas introduced by Splitting will be further explored in the current Haimaz, Heimr, Hjem, Heem, Hm, Home exhibit, running March 10 – July 15. Steffensen hopes that the works on display encourage viewers "to really think about what home means to them, and to look around and see if that's what they see as home for other people, and really try to consider what's going on around them and what it means to lack a home."