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A brand new exhibit taking a deep dive into the early years of graffiti here in the city and
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chronicling the art form that has become a global phenomenon. Yeah, the image is captured through
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the lens of legendary New York photographer Gordon Matta-Clark. Fox Eyes' Jessica Formoso
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takes us inside for a preview. Inside the art gallery, white columns, the walls are covered
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with graffiti. The exhibition, Gordon Matta-Clark, New York City Graffiti Archive, taking us back to
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1972-73, the beginning of the graffiti art movement in New York City. And it was really
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the first time that anyone had paid serious attention to the culture of graffiti. A culture
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that has become the DNA of our city. Behind the lens, documenting it all, graffiti artist and
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photographer Gordon Matta-Clark. Over a period of two years, he took about 3,000 photos of graffiti
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made mostly by teenagers from Harlem, the Bronx, and everywhere in between
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Who saw themselves as writers, not as graffiti artists. And it's the beginning of something that, of course
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10 years later in the 1980s would find its way into popular culture Subway trains at the time were the focus As a writer himself Gordon Matta capturing the story of a city through street art A lot of these photographs are the originals
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Until a couple of years ago, these photographs were unknown. So for a lot of these writers
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a lot of this work was never documented. It was fleeting. It was just passing by. The MTA would
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clean the trains. It would disappear. So this is really one of the best records of this early part
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of graffiti history. Chris Pape, whose artistic name is Freedom, has a lot of appreciation for
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this exhibit. I dabbled in 74 and 75 and I got to meet a number of these guys and then in 1979 I
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went all in and became a graffiti writer. He personally met a lot of the artists whose work
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is on display. So then if you look at that that's 1972 and at that time Snake One was only doing
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tags, and then you just switch to this in 1973, and now he's got that exact same pop
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modern sensibility to his work. This exhibition is free to the public
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You can come and enjoy this artwork from now until May 17th
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In the Meatpacking District, I'm Jessica Formoso, Fox 5 News
