Siena’s Centro di Arte Contemporanea embarks on a new course with a new name (SMS Contemporanea), a new logo (a black staircase on a green background), new premises (moving from the Palazzo delle Papesse to the nearby Santa Maria della Scala complex), and the opening of a major exhibition (dedicated to Gordon Matta-Clark, until October 18).

This extensive retrospective pays homage to the American Anarchitect born in New York in 1943 (and who died aged only 35). During the early 1970s he transformed some of the most desolate corners of New York and created art with those parts of the city that aroused no interest (“the places where you stop and tie your shoelace, places that interrupt your daily movements”). They were ephemeral, transgressive and clandestine events that survive almost exclusively in the form of photographs and films, but that today provide a source of inspiration for entire generations of contemporary artists and architects. Such as Fake Estates (1973-74), a collection of 15 tiny plots of land (unusable at just 6 square centimetres) between Queens and Staten Island. Or Splitting (1974), a series of abandoned buildings that were quite literally cut into separate parts. Or Garbage Wall (1970), the wall made of garbage for the homeless of New York and now rebuilt in Siena. Elena Sommariva

www.papesse.org