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Circus (Caribbean Orange)

A work made of collage of silver dye-bleach prints.

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  • A work made of collage of silver dye-bleach prints.

Date:

1978

Artist:

Gordon Matta-Clark
American, 1943-1978

About this artwork

Trained as an architect, Gordon Matta-Clark gave spaces affected by blight or gentrification a second life as sculptures by cutting geometric voids into condemned buildings with a chainsaw. For Circus (Caribbean Orange), commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA), Matta-Clark carved three spherical volumes (like a three-ring circus) from a three-story townhouse adjacent to the MCA’s former location, before the building was transformed into additional gallery space. Matta-Clark printed slides of the resulting space and then cut into the photographs to produce collages like this one. He explains that these photocollages “try and capture the ‘all around’ experience of the piece” and are “an approximation of this kind of ambulatory ‘getting to know’ what the space is about.”

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Gordon Matta-Clark

Title

Circus (Caribbean Orange)

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

1978

Medium

Collage of silver dye-bleach prints

Dimensions

Image/paper, approx: 57 × 170.8 cm (22 1/2 × 67 1/4 in.); Frame: 66.1 × 180.4 × 5.1 cm (26 × 71 × 2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Judith Neisser

Reference Number

2018.651

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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