a conversation with marco maggi _ roll online.pdf

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A Conversation with Marco Maggiby Mary-Kay Lombino

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College will present thesolo exhibition Marco Maggi: Lentissimo from January 20 to April 1,2012. Curated by Mary-Kay Lombino, the Art Center’s Emily HargrovesFisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and assistant director forstrategic planning, Lentissimo is an exhibition of 14 colorful new works byMarco Maggi made expressly for the occasion of this exhibition.

Named for the Italian word for very slow as well as the musical tempo thatdenotes only 40 beats per minute, Lentissimo explores the artist’srelationship to time while inviting viewers in for quiet, careful observation.The works on view represent not only the slow pace required for viewingthe work, but also reflect the intense concentration, introspection, andattention to detail involved in the artistic process. For example, works inMaggi’s Hotbed series which will be on view on the floor of each gallery,are at once large-scale, site-specific installations and a series of miniaturesculptures, inspiring the viewer in to experience them on two levels – froma distance and then up close.

A Conversation with Marco Maggi | Roll Online http://www.rollmagazine.com/a-conversation-with-marco-maggi/

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Maggi, who resides in the Hudson Valley community of New Paltz (NY),“is an extraordinary draftsman known for his painstaking attention toprocess and minute detail,” remarked Lombino. “He takes ordinary mass-produced materials such as reams of colored paper, rolls of aluminum foil,empty slide casings, eyeglass lenses, white envelopes, and acrylic parkingmirrors as the starting point for his work. He then transforms theseeveryday items through his intricate, often repetitive, and sometimesobsessive patterns that spread across their surfaces forming amorphouslandscapes, imagined topographies, or elaborate diagrams that serve asa commentary on the high-volume, technology-driven speed of the worldin which we live.”

Blue Hotbed Marco Maggi Blue Hotbed, 2011 (detail) Cuts on 49 paper

reams Courtesy of the artist © Marco Maggi

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Hotbed Marco Maggi Hotbed, 2009 (detail) Cuts on paper

Courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery © Marco Maggi

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Lentissimo: a conversation with Mary-Kay Lombino and

Marco Maggi.

Marco Maggi, who is creating all new work for his upcoming exhibitionLentissimo, possesses a keen awareness of the tricks language often playswith logic. His attentiveness to paradox and to the hazards of the constantrace forward in the name of progress is evident in his poetic approach tolife and art. In a recent interview, Mary-Kay Lombino, The EmilyHargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Directorfor Strategic Planning, spoke to Maggi about this approach as well as hisinfluences, processes, and philosophies.

Mary-Kay Lombino (MKL):

The materials you use are not typical fine art materials, but householditems like aluminum foil, eyeglass lenses, parking mirrors, and reams ofpaper. What attracts you to such materials?

Marco Maggi (MM):

Go slower and closer.

Speed is tragic in cars, arts, and malls. When I reduce my speed at HomeDepot or Stop & Shop, I always discover amazing surfaces: fromMacintosh apple skin to the silky back side of construction rulers. Eachsurface has many faces to establish intimate dialogues with my three tools:pencil, X-Acto knife, and time.

After seeing one of my aluminum drawings on view, the viewer, returningto the supermarket, can give a second chance or smile to Reynoldsfoil rolls.

MKL:

The attention to detail in your works conveys the craftsmanship of thehand-made, yet they begin with objects that are industrially fabricated.

Reynolds Wrap Marco Maggi Reynolds Wrap, 2008 (detail) Drypoint,

aluminum, and Reynolds packaging Courtesy of Hosfelt Gallery ©

Marco Maggi

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This seems to set up a tension in your work because they are both high-tech and low-tech at the same time. Which aspect do you embrace more?

MM:

Digital!

Enveloping Marco Maggi Enveloping, 2011 (detail) Cuts on 48 envelopes

Courtesy of the artist © Marco Maggi

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Enveloping Marco Maggi Enveloping, 2011 Cuts on 48 envelopes Courtesy of

the artist © Marco Maggi

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Industry will never create a more digital tool than a hand: five digitsinstead of only zeros and ones. I love computers because they go fasterand faster to allow us to go lentissimo. Tension is a key word for me:tension between cold materials and personal hand, tension between textand texture, or between macro and micro. I can find many dichotomiesand tensions but not one specific intention in my work; I am onlysuggesting some protocol mutations.

MKL:

You have a talent for transforming the artistic gesture into tightlycontrolled, almost obsessive mark making. How do you attain suchcontrol? Do you use mathematical systems to work out your compositions,or are your drawings all free form?

MM:

It’s not a mathematical jail, it’s not free form, and it’s time.

My work has plenty of warm rules to try to make the time visible and thespace invisible. Our illegible world is global and myopic. Braking time andreducing the scale is my answer. No big solutions or urgent revolutions: myproposal is a homeopathic process. Person by person, step by step, inchby inch.

MKL:

You must have extraordinary reserves of patience and dexterity to achievesuch minute detail in your work. Are these attributes you have always had,or skills you had to acquire through practice in order to accomplish yourartistic objectives?

MM:

If you trust in slow politics you must exercise humor and patience.Waiting… I try to build a second reality.

Drop Marco Maggi Drop, 2009 Cuts on plexiglas cube Courtesy of Hosfelt

Gallery © Marco Maggi

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MKL:

Many of your works are quiet and understated and invite slow observationin order to discover some of the gems hidden in the details. Do youintentionally make art that unravels slowly as the viewer experiences thework more closely?

MM:

Yes, yes! That is the center of my protocol mutation proposal. Nowadaysdelicacy becomes a subversive activity because we love terahertz andlong-distance lives.

Fast viewers see, from far away, a drawing as a blank sheet. Slow viewerscan read ten times more in the same drawing, switching perspective andconclusions many more times. My main focus is not the object or thesubject. I focus on the time between the object and the viewer. I aminterested in the specific protocol of manners and pace in the viewingprocess.

MKL:

Can you tell me about your interest in language and information (codes,maps, diagrams) and how that influences your work as well as the titles ofyour works?

MM:

Building a second reality needs a lot encoding and planning. A languagehotbed is always based in a growing alphabet, happy diagrams, and syntax.

To draw is very similar to writing in a language that I cannot read: a textwith no hope of being informative. It’s not a thread; it is training tostimulate our empathy for insignificance.

In recent years I have been working on a series titled The Ted TurnerCollection from CNN to DNA. The project started by thinking about theword “cover”. It’s interesting to me that the mass media use the word“cover” to mean the opposite: to show something. They promise“complete coverage”. Sometimes the coverage is so efficient that wecannot recognize the difference between live transmission and death. Weare familiar with the DNA structure or genome alphabet but we cannotread a hair that obviously includes the information to clone our best friend.I have only one question: is the inability to relate to this a type ofinformation blindness or should it be described as a new form of illiteracy?In either case the most advisable thing to do is to patiently resign ourselvesto the fact that we are doomed to knowing more and understanding less — victims of semiotic indigestion. The extreme percussion of news preventsany repercussion of the news. An overdose of drama is the perfectanesthetic, a tool for censorship that is more efficient than a pair ofscissors. We are setting up a society of dysfunctional information.


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MKL:

Your Hotbeds remind me of Felix-Gonzales Torres’s stacks of posters orphotocopies on the one hand, and on the other hand they recall tinyabstract monuments strategically placed in the center of miniature cityplazas. Which do you relate more to, the simple yet powerful gesturesTorres made on the floor of art galleries and museums or the more grandachievement of erecting sculpture in a public space?

MM:

Influence is always invisible to its victims. I know that I really love Felixand his generous art dissemination, dynamics, and sublime contamination.

My Hotbed series is related to tectonic archives and books profiles. Theyare static landscapes in transition between constructing and demolishing,between models and ruins. The American ream is a paper-like microsculpture and pedestal all in one.

The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College will present thesolo exhibition Marco Maggi: Lentissimo from January 20 to April1, 2012.

Exhibition Events:Friday, January 20: 5:30pmOpening reception and lecture:His Humble Majesty: The Artistry of Marco MaggiA lecture by Linda Weintraub, educator, author, artist, and curator.Taylor Hall, Room 203Reception: 6:30pm in the Art Center Atrium

Ladder Upside Down Marco Maggi Ladder Upside Down, 2010 Cuts on paper in

55 slide mounts Courtesy of Josée Bienvenu Gallery © Marco Maggi

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a conversation with marco maggi _ roll online.pdf

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