Abstract
This article places the conceptual artist Gordon Matta-Clark in conversation with hermeneutical debates within the field of theological aesthetics. By exploring the transformative effect Matta-Clark’s Splitting evokes on spatially related categories, I argue that place is a locus of meaning, and that absence is a constitutive feature of that meaning. The hermeneutics at play in Matta-Clark have a set of formal features which is in accord with certain positions within theological aesthetics, namely: the particularities of place over the generalities of space, the constitutive role of both absence and presence for perception, and the formative power of these on human identity. A final section argues that while meaning is embedded in place, the imagination retains a vital place in the hermeneutical process through its “imaging” function in events of perception.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 920 |
Number of pages | 18 |
Journal | Religions |
Volume | 13 |
Issue number | 10 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 30 Sept 2022 |
Keywords
- Gordon Matta-Clark
- Theological aesthetics
- Theology and the Arts
- Conceptual art
- Hermeneutics
- Perception
- Imagination
- Place