Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio
Exhibition

Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio

Vito Acconci "Air Time", 1973

The exhibition on the work of Vito Acconci (New York, 1940) held at MACBA in 2005 explored the extremely personal career of the artist, from his earliest days as a poet in the latest seventies up until his most recent interventions in public space.

Although Acconci initially conceived the blank page as a discursive space on which to set down his radical poetic interventions, he soon began to find this format stifling and he set out to explore the city. In Following Piece (1969) he would go out on the streets each day and follow one person chosen at random, until they disappeared into a private space. This was the first in a long series of performances that featured the artist himself and were documented in the form of photographs, films and sound works. Many of his actions developed into installations that took place in galleries, which became the stage for his increasingly distinctive reflections on the boundaries between artist and audience, object and event, and public and private spheres.

Although he never totally abandoned his links to writing, in the late seventies Acconci began to devise extendable, mobile structures and used them to once again occupy the street and disrupt the conventions of public space. Since 1988, the Vito Acconci Studio has undertaken numerous architectural projects that help to redefine the uses and functions of the urban environment.

This exhibition looks at the singular career of Vito Acconci from the mid sixties to the early eighties and includes poetry, performance, photography, film and video, a selection of installations, models and architectural projects.
Vito Acconci (New York, 1940) began his artistic career as a poet in the mid sixties under the name Vito Hannibal Acconci. In his creations he treated the blank paper as a space where he could act, using words as elements for movement and the page as a container. Later his poetic actions moved from paper to the gallery, and evolved into performances in which he reflected on his own physical and psychological being. In both the performances and the installations of the seventies, his figure was always present, physically or through films or recordings of his voice, whose sound provided the visitor with a heightened sensual experience. Acconci was proposing a new definition of the material object and a space for common experiences between spectator and artist by erasing the traditional boundaries between an artist and his public, an object and an event in time, a work of art and its existence in a spatial and/or social context.
In the early eighties, his interest in space led him to create the Acconci Studio, a work cell that brought together architects and artists, whose investigations evolved on an architectural scale and proposed interventions of an environmental and architectural nature. The power of the ideas of Acconci Studio, in which the artist maintained his commitment to language, the body and its relation with space, consisted of drastically rethinking the definitions of public space.
On the occasion of this exhibition, MACBA has prepared a database which will contain over thirteen hours of sound work which Acconci did during the seventies, including a large amount of unreleased material.

Curator: Corinne Diserens
Production: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)

Itinerances

15 JULY – 17 OCT. 2004 Musée de Beaux Arts de Nantes
01 OCT. 2005 – 15 JAN. 2006 Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
19 NOV. 2004 – 14 FEB. 2005 Museum galleries 
14 APR. – 05 JUNE 2005 CAAM

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dates
19 November 2004 – 14 February 2005
title
Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio
dates
19 November 2004 – 14 February 2005
title
Vito Hannibal Acconci Studio
artist
Vito Acconci
New York
1940
Vito Acconci (Nueva York, 1941-2017) began his artistic career as a poet in the mid-1960s. In his first pieces, he treated the blank page as a space where he could act, using words as material for movement and the page as a container. His works were poetic acts using various ingredients and materials like cassettes, walls or the chairs in a room. Later on, his poetic actions moved from paper to gallery space, evolving into performances in which Acconci reflected on his own physical and psychological being. Both in his performances and his installations from the beginning of the 1970s, the figure of the artist always had a physical presence, either through films or recordings of his voice, whose sound afforded the visitor a very intense sensorial experience. Acconci proposed a new definition of the physical object and a space of shared experience between the viewer and the artist by disposing of the traditional borders between an artist and his public, an object and a temporal event, a work of art and its existence within a spacial and/or social context. Little by little, after a period creating numerous installations in interior spaces (usually galleries or museums), his interest in spaces turned towards public spaces. In 1988 he formed the Acconci Studio, a work cell which brought architects together with artists whose work was developing in an architectural scale, and who envisaged environmental and architectural kinds of interventions. The power of the Acconci Studio’s projects – where the artist remains committed to language, the body and his relationship with the space – consists of a dramatically rethinking what defines public space, and questioning our way of seeing it and using it.
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