Gordon Matta-Clark, publisher, at Printed Matter NYC
Printed Matter presents New Openings Against Old Surfaces: On Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls Paper, the first exhibition focused specifically on the publishing output of pioneering artist Gordon Matta-Clark, with a particular focus on his project Walls Paper. Organized as part of Printed Matter’s 50th Anniversary Program, the show offers an in-depth consideration of the 1973 publication, situating the work as a key experiment within the artist’s diverse and ambitious practice, and with the artists’ book medium at large. The exhibition will be on view at 231 11th Ave., New York, NY 10001 from September 9 through November 29, 2026.
The exhibition is organized with the participation of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, with materials drawn from its archives, and the Gordon Matta-Clark collection at the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in Montreal. On occasion of the exhibition, Printed Matter will realize two newly-created commissions from contemporary artists in dialogue with the legacy of Matta-Clark.
New Openings Against Old Surfaces is presented as part of Printed Matter’s 50th Anniversary programming, connecting the artist’s experimentation in book form to the radical milieu that characterized the time of PM’s founding—and with contemporary artists’ practice today.
Published by Buffalo Press in 1973, Walls Paper gathers and abstracts a series of photographs by Matta-Clark depicting the crumbling interior walls of half-demolished tenement buildings across the South Bronx and Lower East Side. The images are reproduced in low-contrast black and white, and overprinted with hazy neons that likely referenced the patchwork of exposed wallpapering he encountered. The publication—Matta-Clark’s most formally inventive and arguably his one true artists’ book—features newsprint pages that have been bound together and horizontally bisected, effectively creating two distinct booklets in one. Produced at a time of political upheaval and artistic awakening, Walls Paper shares the structural and conceptual daring of the early architectural interventions that Matta-Clark performed in response to the dire conditions of economic crisis, systemic neglect, and widespread urban decay of New York City in the early 1970s.
Matta-Clark first presented the Walls Paper project a year before its publication in book form, in a solo exhibition at the alternative, artist-run venue 112 Greene Street in SoHo. The show brought together excised fragments and photo documentation from the first building cuts made by the artist—Bronx Floors, and a section of wall from FOOD restaurant—alongside the installation of Walls Paper in long newsprint strips from ceiling to floor, and a version offered in tall stacks that one could freely take and hang at home. New Openings grounds itself in this presentation at 112 Greene Street, underscoring its significance in laying the foundation for Matta-Clark’s future large-scale cuttings and his use of sculptural, photographic, and print-based techniques to interrogate conventions of the built environment and its social dimension.
New Openings Against Old Surfaces situates Matta-Clark’s explorations of the book form in relation to early architectural cuts made between 1971–74, demonstrating his burgeoning efforts to reconceptualize space, and his approach to the politics inherent within both the printed page and physical structure. An array of archival print materials related to Walls Paper are on view, including documentary photos, test prints, uncut printer sheets, and an original set of prints from the installation at 112 Greene Street. Additional publications from Matta-Clark are also featured, including materials connected to his two other published projects, Splitting (98 Greene Street Loft Press, New York, 1974) and Circus-The Caribbean Orange (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1978).
Other highlights of the exhibition include an original hand-cut notebook styled as a unique artists’ book, and a recreation of the layout for a publication proposal titled Quadrille (1973), a never-realized project that brings together photographs from four building cuts, placed alongside quasi-poetic captions.
“This artwork by Gordon Matta-Clark exemplifies his unique multi-disciplinary approach to questioning urban architecture at a pivotal crisis moment when New York City was failing so many of its citizens,” Jessamyn Fiore, Director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark, said. “His Walls series, documenting the forms and textures of interior walls made exterior, evolved across various formats—as an installation, a folded sheet, and this remarkable artists’ book. The work brought the afterimages of a disinvested city from the gallery space into the home and finally into the hands, connecting the reader to these walls that once held a community. The exhibition at Printed Matter, amidst a continued interest in Gordon’s work all over the world, helps to place the importance of this project within a broader context, and demonstrates how Walls Paper in particular continues to resonate for a next generation of artists and artists’ book makers.
New Openings Against Old Surfaces is curated by Keith Gray, Programming Manager, and Hannah Marshall, Programming Coordinator & Designer, for Printed Matter.
PROGRAMMING
September 9th, 6-8 pm
A Conversation with Jessamyn Fiore and Frances Richard
Fiore, Director of the Matta-Clark Estate, is joined by scholar Richard for a special public conversation on Matta-Clark’s relationship to books and language
September 10th, 6-8 pm
Opening Reception
Refreshments and an early opportunity to see the exhibition, with remarks from Fiore
ABOUT PRINTED MATTER
Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the distribution, understanding and appreciation of artists’ books and related artists’ publications.
In December 1975, a group of artists and art workers — Edit deAk, Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard, Walter Robinson, Pat Steir, Irena von Zahn, Mimi Wheeler, and Robin White, among others — sent out a letter asking friends and a loosely-formed network of bookmakers to help build a different kind of publishing and distribution system for artists’ books. Their work set in place what would soon become Printed Matter, with its first meetings held at the Franklin Furnace space before the organization was formally established with the opening of its ground-level bookstore on Tribeca’s Lispenard Street in 1976.
Printed Matter coalesced around the idea that there was a growing need for an organization that championed artists who made books that “weren’t art in the conventional sense” — work that was affordable, widely accessible, and rich with possibilities. Founder Lucy Lippard and inaugural director Ingrid Sischy successfully secured nonprofit status in 1979, arguing to the IRS that the organization was “a service, an educational-vehicle, an artistic-practice” in need of support.
Printed Matter emerged as part of the creative and cultural awakening that shaped the Downtown Art Scene of the 1970s, alongside like-minded organizations including Wooster Group, PS1 (now MoMA PS1), White Columns, Artists’ Space, and the Drawing Center. Artists had begun to see the publication as an alternative to mainstream modes of art making — a way to get work into the hands of the public, outside the gallery system and on their own terms.
Fifty years on, Printed Matter continues that work. Its current home — a two-level bookstore and office on 11th Avenue and 26th Street, its fifth and largest location — houses 15,000 books by artists, zines, and periodicals, as well as out-of-print titles and historical ephemera. Its publishing imprint carries a backlist of nearly fifty titles, from early works like Martha Rosler’s Service (1978) to recent publications including Mark Gonzales: Non-Stop Poetry (2014), Art Rite (co-published with Primary Information, 2019), Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s No New Theories (2019), Carmen Winant’s Notes on Fundamental Joy (2020), and Jason Polan: The Post Office (2025). Its Art Book Fairs in New York and Los Angeles have helped establish a global model for art book fairs as major cultural gatherings.
In all this, Printed Matter continues a legacy in the tradition of its founders: providing support to artists’ books and the community of bookmakers who sustain the field, and ensuring a platform that connects new audiences to the political, cultural, and artistic potential of the form.
