Gordon Matta-Clark's Bingo (1974) is a seminal work of site-specific "anarchitecture"—the artist's term for interventions that challenge conventional architecture through deconstruction and revelation of hidden structures. Created in a soon-to-be-demolished two-story red-shingled house at 349 Erie Avenue in Niagara Falls, New York, the project involved meticulously cutting the building's north facade into a nine-panel grid reminiscent of a bingo card. Matta-Clark removed sections to expose the interior, creating voids that played with light, space, and perception, while emphasizing the transience of urban decay and suburban obsolescence.Originally titled Been-Gone by Ninth (a pun on "bingo" and the nine divisions), the work critiques American consumer culture and the disposability of built environments, evoking the era's economic decline in industrial towns like Niagara Falls. Documentation includes a Super 8 film (Bingo/Ninths, 9:40 min, silent), black-and-white photographs of the process and fragments, and three surviving physical sections of the cut house—painted wood, metal, plaster, and glass—measuring overall 69" x 25' 7" x 10" (175.3 x 779.8 x 25.4 cm). These fragments were salvaged before demolition and later exhibited, as in a 2004 show at David Zwirner Gallery.The piece is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, where it exemplifies Matta-Clark's influence on conceptual and land art movements.
Gordon Matta-Clark: Bingo / MoMA, New York, August 28, 2025.
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