Gordon Matta-Clark & Food: An Early Experiment in Social Action Art

Gordon Matta-Clark and FOOD: An Early Experiment in Social Action Art

FOOD was an artist-run restaurant in Soho, NYC, founded in 1971 by artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Carol Goodden. It was run by them along with Tina Girouard and other artists who were a part of 112 Greene Street, a nearby artist-run alternative space. FOOD was a place where artists in SoHo could meet to enjoy food together and participate in special Sunday dinners that introduced new types of cuisine or creative artist made meals. FOOD was considered to be both a business and an artistic "intervention in an urban setting."

Born in New York City in 1943, Gordon Matta-Clark studied architecture and graduated from Cornell University in 1968, returning to his native New York City the following year. Combining his activist concerns with his artistic production, he helped establish alternative spaces such as 112 Greene Street, and the Food Restaurant in SoHo and engaged with peer artists and non-artists in collaboration that aimed to improve their surroundings. In the 1970s, Matta-Clark experimented across various media and began staging monumental interventions and smaller-scale installations in the charged city landscape, bringing attention to New York's failing social policies, displaced people, and abandoned spaces. Through his many projects—including large-scale architectural interventions in which he physically cut through buildings slated for demolition—Matta-Clark developed a singular body of work that critically examined the structures of the built environment. Gordon Matta-Clark died from cancer in 1978 at the age of 35.

Jessamyn Fiore is the Director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark as well as a curator and writer. She lives in Chesterfield, NH. The Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark is a small, private, family-run artist estate that was Founded by Jane Crawford, the artist’s widow. In 2012 Crawford’s daughter, Jessamyn Fiore, officially joined as Co-Director of the Estate and became Director in 2025. In 2002, the Estate moved the archive of Gordon Matta-Clark to the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, officially gifting it to the institution in 2011. Since 1998, the Estate has been represented by the David Zwirner Gallery. In addition to facilitating exhibitions, publications and projects about Gordon Matta-Clark, the Estate also supports the generation of new work by contemporary artists and other creatives in conversation with Matta-Clark's practice and legacy.

SPAR(K) has hosted four Social Practice Artist Residencies in Keene since 2022. The opportunity to have a locally-based artistic institution (The Gordon Matta-Clark Estate) present the story of an internationally important artist in the context of Brewbaker’s Cafe where food and community have organically become a striking local presence offers a rich possibility for considering who we are in Keene at this time!

This event is by donation. The talk will begin a little after 5pm, followed by a screening of the film!

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