Gordon Matta-Clark and NYC Graffiti Culture 1972–73 

Floor 3, Theater and online, via Zoom

Join us for a celebration of the exhibition Gordon Matta-Clark: NYC Graffiti Archive 1972–73 at White Columns, one of the Whitney’s downtown neighbors. Featuring presentations by co-curators Jessamyn Fiore and Roger Gastman alongside artists Taki 183, Leonard Hilton McGurr, aka Futura 2000, and Michael Lawrence, with Mike 171 and SJK 171, the program explores Gordon Matta-Clark’s lifelong interest in the relationship between art and public space, his understanding of graffiti as an art form in its own right, and these artists’ involvement in the inception of the graffiti movement. The program also includes a screening of UGA (1973), featuring rare footage of the group United Graffiti Artists (UGA), an influential collective of early graffiti writers founded in 1972 by Hugo Martinez, a sociology student at the City College of New York.  

Between 1972 and 1973 Gordon Matta-Clark took thousands of photographs of graffiti in New York City, telling the story of a changing city through the unlikely entwinement of early street art with the evolving practice of a major conceptual artist. The exhibition Gordon Matta-Clark: NYC Graffiti Archive 1972–73 displays a selection of the artist’s photographs from the period alongside early, original artworks by the writers and artists immortalized within Matta-Clark’s images.  

This program is co-presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art and White Columns.  

Speakers 

Roger Gastman is co-curator of Gordon Matta-Clark: NYC Graffiti Archive 1972–73, and a writer, archivist, and collector whose work is focused on elevating and historicizing the ongoing graffiti art movement. Gastman is the producer of the 2010 Academy Award–nominated film Exit Through the Gift Shop, co-curator of Art in the Streets (2011) at MOCA, Los Angeles, and director of the SHOWTIME documentary Rolling Like Thunder (2021), which explores the underground world of freight train graffiti culture. In 2018 Gastman founded BEYOND THE STREETS, an organization that presents large-scale exhibitions and educational programs on graffiti and street art. 

Jessamyn Fiore is co-curator of Gordon Matta-Clark: NYC Graffiti Archive 1972–3 and co-director of the Estate of Gordon Matta-Clark. She organized 112 Greene Street: The Early Years (1970–1974) at David Zwirner in New York (2011), which led to her editing the critically acclaimed, eponymous catalogue, published by David Zwirner and Radius Books (2012). Fiore also co-curated, with Sergio Bessa, Gordon Matta-Clark: Anarchitect at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2017).  

Michael Lawrence is a photographer best known for his documentation of graffiti writers’ work in New York in the 1970s, including the influential early artist collectives United Graffiti Artists (UGA) and Nation of Graffiti Artists. Working as the assistant to Joffrey Ballet photographer Herbert Migdoll in the 1970s, Lawrence captured UGA’s live performance in collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet in 1973. A book of Lawrence’s photographs of Nation of Graffiti Artists was published by Beyond the Streets in 2021.  

MIKE 171 grew up on the corner of 171st Street and Audubon Avenue in Washington Heights, where he became a part of the first generation of New York graffiti writers. An original organizing member of UGA, MIKE 171 participated in the group’s 1973 collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet and appeared in some of the earliest press on the movement, including in New York Magazine. He was featured in the 2016 documentary film Wall Writers: Graffiti in its Innocence. MIKE 171 is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and continues to participate in street art through the Rooftop Graffiteria, an outdoor art gallery located on the roof of his building in Astoria, Queens. 

SJK 171, an early graffiti pioneer, grew up alongside MIKE 171 on 171st Street in Washington Heights. He is credited for his early usage of the characteristic squiggly radiant “energy lines” later popularized by Keith Haring. He participated in UGA’s 1973 collaboration with the Joffrey Ballet, in which the group spray-painted their tags live on stage during the premiere performance of Twyla Tharp’s Deuce Coupe. In addition to being an original member of UGA, SJK 171 was also one of the first graffiti writers to document and preserve his and his friends’ works in photographs. His work is included in the permanent collection of The Museum of the City of New York. 

TAKI 183 is widely recognized as the first graffiti writer to gain mainstream recognition for his work. As a teenager living in Washington Heights, TAKI worked as a courier, which took him all around the city, leaving tags as he went. The 1971 New York Times article “TAKI 183 Spawns Pen Pals” cemented TAKI’s reputation as the first graffiti writer in the newly growing writing movement (although he credits figures like JULIO 204 as predating him). Though prolific, his career was short-lived: he quit writing in 1971. 

FUTURA 2000 (Leonard Hilton McGurr) is an artist whose practice first developed within the graffiti genre in New York City during the 1970s. He was among the earliest graffiti artists to show in contemporary art galleries in the early 1980s. In 2023, The University at Buffalo Art Galleries presented FUTURA 2000: Breaking Out, the first comprehensive solo institutional examination featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, studies, collaborations, and archival paraphernalia to showcase the artist’s polyphonic output.  

Film Information

UGA (1973) presents rare footage of the group United Graffiti Artists (UGA) at work in the studio alongside documentation of their participation in Twyla Tharp’s ballet Deuce Coupe at the Joffrey Ballet in 1973. UGA was an influential artist collective of early graffiti writers founded in 1972. Members included SNAKE 1, SJK 171, MIKE 171, STITCH 1, HENRY 161, WICKED GARY, BAMA, COCO 144, CHARMIN 65, PHASE 2, and several others. For the premiere of Deuce Coupe, which was widely considered the first “crossover” ballet to blend classical dance with elements of pop culture, members of UGA were invited to spray paint scenery live on stage while dancers performed to the music of the Beach Boys.