It is called an easement, though there's nothing easy about it.
In New York City, spaces like these are not part of the commons, but considered real estate, and owning the buildings on either side doesn't mean you own it. The technical term for these liminal if not uninhabitable spaces is "odd lots", and you can buy them from the City, as the artist Gordon Matta-Clark did to make a point, as artists are want to do.
What attracts me to this Kingsway easement includes its surfaces: the concrete ground, which for years was dirt, some plant life and garbage; the stucco siding on the wall of Mùi Ngò Gai to the right; and the more recent update on wood protection: the vinyl siding on The Tipper to the left.
My interest in this easement is first and foremost formal, but for Matta-Clark, his formal interests always carried a social-historical imperative, and he was known for having a big heart and for opening an inexpensive artist-run restaurant called FOOD. Gallerist David Zwirner, who represents Matta-Clark's artistic estate, told me once that Matta-Clark was the last great modernist, and the more I learn about Matta-Clark, the less I care about modernism.
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