Imagine that you are a homeless person in New York City. Is it so unlikely? You bum around during the day, giving yourself mental pats-on-the-back whenever someone gives you a quarter and come back to your makeshift home underneath the Brooklyn bridge just as it’s getting dark. One day, you come back and do a double take. There have always been cars underneath the bridge (you never knew how they got there in the first place), but today there are teams of scraggly haired men and women bent over in exertion, lugging pieces of sharp metal as they make their way towards the cars. You ask them what they are doing. After they catch their collective breath, they reply that it is an art demonstration named Jacks. You later learn that Jacks is organized by a woman named Alanna Heiss, and that the man with whom you spoke is named Gordon Matta-Clark.

Matta-Clark ’68, a former architecture student at Cornell and pioneer of the “anarchitecture movement” of the ’70s and ’80s, specialized in public urban art, specifically in the way that architecture can be anarchistic. That is, Gordon broke architectural conventions by deconstructing and creating disorder by restructuring buildings and other structures by removing something from them, sometimes removing part or all of the walls of a house. Gordon’s work includes projects such as “Jacks” (1971) and “Splitting” (1974), wherein he and his friends split a house in Englewood, New Jersey down the middle by hand, leaving it as if some giant had cut it with a massive knife. With “Fake Estates” (1975), Gordon bought several dozen pieces of real estate, ranging from alleyways to small patches of dirt and abandoned lots, and photographed them all to create an album of cast-off pieces of land.

Needless to say, much of Gordon’s artwork is unattainable and ephemeral. In fact, most of it has been torn down or replaced with new housing. For every house that Gordon recreated with his electric saw, there was a wrecking ball waiting. Thus, most of his work no longer exists, most of it can only be seen through photos or movies. Indeed, Gordon himself died at 35 from pancreatic cancer.

Hidden away on the second floor of the Johnson Museum, in a space called the New Media Room, there is what can be described as Gordon Matta-Clark’s demonstrations — maybe feelings — on display. There are two television screens continuously playing a few of his films, which are rotated out every week. Currently playing is “Sauna,” “Automation House,” “Clockshower” and “City Slivers.” Sitting down and watching these works, some of which have sound and color, while others are black and white, silent and over an hour long, one realizes Matta-Clark’s wide range. It is also clear that he uses architecture as a medium, not as a source. Matta-Clark merely uses walls, borders, plots of land and public structures to demonstrate his own artistic vision.

One particularly striking short film is “Clockshower.” Sitting firmly in our chair, we watch as Matta-Clark climbs to the top of the Clocktower Building in New York City and proceeds to shower, brush his teeth and shave, holding onto clock’s hands as support. Even more interesting is the second half of the hand-shot movie, where we see Matta-Clark encased in a cocoon of shaving cream (held up by sort of minimalist hammock) come to life by directing the water hose over his body, washing off the shaving cream and eventually regaining his hands, using them to hold onto and manipulate the clock’s hands until he can fully stand. Taken along with “City Slivers,” in whcih Matta-Clark effectively splits the screen between many scenes of normal life or buildings in New York City, it is apparent from the film that Matta-Clark aches to present everyday goings-on in an unorthodox manner, perhaps forcing us to contemplate our surroundings from different perspectives.

Gordon Matta-Clark’s works are unique and, in my opinion, inspirational. Years after his death, he reminds us that structures can be re-imagined to fit one’s own purpose, that you can build or construct by taking away and that art does not necessarily belong in a gallery. Some of his projects may seem bizarre, even disturbing at a surface level. That being said, it is entirely possible that after you will walk out of the New Media Room after viewing one of Matta-Clark’s films thinking slightly differently. Isn’t that all we can ask from a piece of art?