Open House

Open House was filmed for the opening of a homonymous piece, financed by Horace and Holly Solomon and built by Gordon Matta-Clark with help from Ted Greenwald, Richard Peck and Manfred Hecht. The piece contains a number of aspects of Matta-Clark’s work, such as his interest in theatre and performance, his approach to sculpture via the architectural, and the literal opening up of spaces traditionally closed to the outside. Open House is a structure built inside an industrial container in New York City between 98 and 112 Greene Street. The container was divided up into three corridors then into smaller rooms, using discarded materials such as doors and old pieces of wood. The roofless construction functioned as a place run by artists, dancers and so on, who activated the piece simply by moving around its spaces. Rain on the day of the opening produced a vivid and colourful umbrella-dance that adds a playful touch to the film. Open House documents that period at the beginning of the 1970s when numerous artists were searching the abandoned industrial premises of Lower Manhattan for new spaces for creation, promotion and exhibition as alternatives to the studio, the museum and the gallery.

Lola Hinojosa