Gordon Matta-Clark at the Whitney Museum

A retrospective of the work of Gordon Matta-Clark could not fail to pose a serious challenge to any museum attempting such a task. By its very nature - conceptual, often-site specific and, in an unfortunately high number of cases, impermanent - the work defies the strict limitations of institutional space. It is a credit to the Whitney then that this show is a success. The work is astutely curated in a manner that emphasizes the focus and coherence of Matta-Clark's work without sacrificing its urgency and socially engaged dimensions. The show is experienced almost as a puzzle, the disparate pieces we initially encounter, coming together to form a cohesive vision of living space in transformation, freeing itself from embedded practices and institutionalized constraints.

The centerpiece of the show, and the work that one first encounters on entry is 'Splitting' from 1974. It is the best known work and here we have not only the familiar documentation on collaged silver gelatin prints but also the four corners of the house on display. These, along with other large pieces of masonry from various projects, add a visceral element that is lost with the simple viewing of photos.

Matta-Clark was himself aware of this as evidenced by his method of collaging photographs . With this move away from simple representation, the sharp edges and non-intuitive manner of their construction comes to echo the fundamental undermining of accepted structures at work in 'Splitting'.It is a process of disorientation and re-orientation, what Matta-Clark himself attempted to label as 'Anarchitecture', that we see again and again throughout the show.