sobre Marco Maggi
about Marco Maggi
A presença do papel e o caráter intimista são duas constantes na produção de
Marco Maggi, mesmo em suas grandes instalações. Desde a consolidação de sua
carreira, na década de 1990, estimula seu público de forma espirituosa e delicada
a diminuir o ritmo cotidiano e observar com vagar, prestar atenção e aprofundarse em suas obras, na vida ao seu redor e na sociedade em que se vive.
Na série “The Ted Turner Collection – from CNN to the DNA”, Maggi demonstra senso crítico apurado, usando reproduções de obras de artistas como
Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol e Hélio Oiticica para comentar a condição midiática
da vida atual. Pilhas de papel em branco cobrem reproduções e, filetadas com
precisão, criam relevos e aberturas que revelam traços de cor da reprodução
oculta embaixo, formando uma grande paisagem branca com pequenas aberturas de cor. As instalações mantêm o uso do papel, mas as numerosas pilhas, a
distância, não revelam sua natureza; é preciso se aproximar, ter certa intimidade
com as obras, dedicar-lhes algum tempo para descobrir o que revelam.
Marco Maggi nasceu em Montevidéu, Uruguai, em 1957. Vive e trabalha em
Nova York e Montevidéu. Seus trabalhos integram acervos como: MoMA, Nova
York, EUA; Whitney Museum of American Art, Nova York, EUA; Guggenheim
Museum, Nova York, EUA; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, EUA; Museum of Fine
Arts, Boston, EUA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, EUA; e
Daros Foundation, Zurique, Suíça; entre outros.
The presence of paper and the intimate character are two constants in the work
of Marco Maggi, even in his large installations. Ever since he established his career,
in the 1990s, Maggi has wittily and delicately encouraged his audience to slow down
their pace, and watch, pay attention, and delve deeper into his works, the life that
surrounds them, and the society in which they live.
In a series entitled “The Ted Turner Collection – from CNN to the DNA,” Maggi
shows his acute critical sense by using reproductions of pieces by artists of the likes
of Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, and Hélio Oiticica to comment on the mediatized
condition of contemporary life. Heaps of white paper cover reproductions, slashed
with precision to create reliefs and gaps that reveal traces of tones from the reproductions hidden underneath, forming a big white landscape spiked with small slits of
color. The installations maintain the use of paper, but from a distance, the numerous
heaps do not show their nature; one must come closer, become somewhat acquainted with the works and dedicate some time to finding out what they reveal.
Marco Maggi was born in 1957 in Montevideo, Uruguay. He lives and works in New
York and Montevideo. His works are included in the collections of the MoMA, New
York, USA; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Guggenheim Museum,
New York, USA; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, USA; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
USA; Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA; and Daros Foundation,
Zurich, Switzerland; among others.
Time Specific 2014 -- cortes em folhas de papel A4 instaladas no chão/cuts on A4 paper installed on the ground -- 22 cm x 20 m
Time Specific 2014 -- detalhe/detail
Putin’s pencils 2014 -- lápis de cor soviéticos de 1952, corda/soviet vintage pencils from 1952, bow strings mounted on wall -- 180 x 240 cm
Putin’s pencils 2014 -- detalhe/detail
Paper Drawing A 2015 -- adesivo branco e preto sobre papel/cut, paste and fold B & W “abecedario” on black mat -- 28 x 35 cm
Paper Drawing (East mosaic) 2014 -- adesivo branco e preto sobre papel/cut, paste and fold B & W “abecedario” on black mat -- 28 x 35 cm
Unfolding Marco Maggi
by François Cusset
Folds, lines, slits, elbows, holes, pointed pencils. Shadows forming letters,
shaping memory, even writing. The work is paper on paper, white on white,
with shadows and ambiguities unfolding in between. Rigorous shapes and local
symmetries develop against the background of a neat geometry. What there is, is
what there is. No leftovers, no hidden truth, no suggested meaning: “Messages,”
as Marco Maggi likes to say, “are for messaging services.”
In The Fold, Deleuze’s strange take on the metaphysics of Leibniz and the
artistic principles of the Baroque could shed light on the singular endeavor of
Marco Maggi. In both cases, it is about accelerating forms while slowing down
our gaze. It is about assuming the absence of a center without falling into the
trap of nihilism. Both confront totality face to face while paying due respect
to every bit of singularity.
You may see circuit boards, precise maps of impossible cities, schematics for
electrical engineering, or the distorted presentation of a complex nervous
system, but do not infer from your inner associations that such things are
actually being represented, allegorized, or referred to here. It is the other
way around: these things are what Maggi’s drawings and paper carvings make
possible, what they render to be real.
In both cases it is about a useless and heavy soul that needs to be taken out
of the windowless room of our mind where literally everything is possible. A
powerful sense of lightness ensues, both as a relief and as a bright sight, as
agility and clarity, opening onto an infinite spectrum of possibilities – provided
they remain light, agile, contingent.
Such drawings and cuttings come first, and form the only matter, the only thing
that matters. They do not open onto a larger system, a world of reference or an
available discourse. They only open onto more folds, lines, slits, elbows, holes,
pointed pencils, ad infinitum.
This is why the most complex, delicate and elaborate in Maggi’s works always
feels like the most simple, both at first sight and as an afterthought. For it comes
first, it stands on its own, triggering an extraordinary feeling of wholeness,
exhaustiveness, fullness, despite (or precisely because of) the many clefts and
tiny cuts ceaselessly cracking that very whole, that purest of all surfaces.
No wonder that the fold is the organizing principle here, as well as the mag(g)
ic force. The fold, as Gilles Deleuze showed us, is the most ambivalent of all
phenomena. It carries forth the undecidable, it creates the ambiguous. It splits
the surface into two incommensurable (or incompossible, in the philosopher’s
lingo) halves. Indeed the fold is what encompasses, or wraps, and escapes or
diverts at the same time. The fold is what dissimulates and reveals.
The fold is the very principle of multiplicity, triggering it constantly. Though it
provides evidence of unity, it does so, much in the same way that a borderline
not only separates two lands, but bonds them together at the same time. The
fold is of another nature, it pertains to a scale other than what our logic and
knowledge have taught us. It is neither outside nor inside, neither very large nor
very small, neither movement nor motionlessness. It is a combination of all of
these qualities.
The fold is our only access to the infinite, suggests Deleuze, who has always
been eager to show us that the microscopic (our cells for example) and the vastly
cosmic (our galaxy and beyond) are two dead ends for whoever is truly in search
of the infinite.
Forget the reinterpretation of cultural history Deleuze had in mind when
writing The Fold, somewhere between Renaissance mannerism and high
modernism (even if Maggi participates in both). Just remember the time
structure of a fold, its ode to the present, or to a quasi-present; so close, yet
unattainable. Now keep in mind the more existential conclusion of Deleuze:
“to inhabit this world is to develop an art of intervals.” It is to find the
present, that enlived essence of time, in intervals only. Yes, the fold is where
the action is. Welcome to a brand new world.
What you find in museums, galleries, books, classrooms, cosmologies and
even political platforms deals only with the vast scale, the larger picture, the
brightly exhibited, the strictly hierarchical (or at least the duly prioritized).
Everything about value – what counts, what is worthwhile, what signifies. In
other words, the exact opposite of intervals, small surprises, and insignificant
details. Traveling through Marco Maggi’s deceivingly nonchalant desert means
losing sight of such arguable priorities, losing a center and the reassuring
presence of an absolute.
Traveling through Maggi’s world requires a chance taken at the slow,
meaningless and infinitesimal, along with their economy of means and radical
ethics. Because some sort of radically egalitarian ethics were built in these
works, to the extent of removing scales and hierarchies, and blurring the
border between the significant and its opposite, amounting to a decree of
ontological equality. Everything is worth everything else, nothing supersedes
or overshadows anything else, and the petty or the anecdotal might very well
become the only two pillars of reality.
Such a decree derives from a true critical commitment, a genuine desire to
stop or slow down what, in our world, has become utterly dysfunctional. It
comes from a distaste with the overinflation of meaningless meaning and
uninformative information.
“The more we know, the less we understand,” in Maggi’s own words.
Conversely, Maggi’s egalitarianism is driven by a subtle preoccupation with the
precarious, hardly visible, and imperceptible. A preoccupation with anything
you might not have noticed in the first place but which could very well change
your life – or at least, if you pause for a second – reshape your gaze.
In short, Maggi’s aesthetic is less an exercise in neo-minimalism, than an ethic
of precision. Less a nostalgia for modernist purism than a politics of slowness.
Less a disappointment with over-information than a specific type of care for
inscribing, staging, archiving and displaying the insignificant.
In Maggi’s world, the insignificant becomes a notion that does not carry a
value judgement but rather an objective description: the insignificant is what
has no pre-given significance. To approach the precarious, the unnoticed and
the slow one needs to use what Deleuze would call “small perceptions”. Small
in the sense of modest, invisible, prediscursive, daring and yet specific.
What is happening on the walls, within the voids of these paper surfaces, is
the inversion of a well-established order. An order which, for millenia, has
imposed on us the notion that any traces, whether in writing or carved at the
core of our public space, should be reserved only for things of importance.
They should qualify what deserves to be inscribed.
As a logical consequence, the insignificant is defined as that which leaves
no trace, no memory. It is what has vanished, and with it the instant of
its short-lived relevance. Memory is about the event, the meaning, the
special. Biographers of Franz Kafka describe in minute details his romantic
relationships and depressive phases. They describe his passionate friendships
and his breakup with the Jewish community, his ire at his publisher, and his
fear of death. But how could they recount his daily shopping, bar jokes, tiny
neuroses, and laundry habits, if these left no traces whatsoever? No traces
left either in his diary or in the memory of witnesses eager to prioritize
significance.
uncertainty,” in order to “better take charge of the vacuum,” to “befriend
emptiness, to impose a pause to the destructive forces of the day” – to quote a
few scattered words from the artist.
But Marco Maggi is no Robin Hood, and his demanding work carries no explicit
moral or political stance, no sentimental surge for or against anything. His
complex circuits and freeplays with paper and shadows, or with bow strings and
pencils, actually exclude, and actually exclude, and thus emancipate us from the
affective and ethical blackmail constantly made to us vis à vis anything – the
obligation to cry, to be moved, to be outraged, to take sides, to always sort out
the good from the evil.
Here, instead of a preacher-like indignation comes a more straightforward
disappointment. Instead of an utter loss comes a vague feeling of being a bit
offside. And instead of grand utopias comes a deliberately unambitious hope
which Maggi calls “hypo-hope.” High precision and low profile, in a nutshell, or
grand subtlety and subjective bareness. Indeed, the Maggi paradox is that of a
nearsightedness – but at a distance.
A familiarity deprived of any déjà-vu, a proudly unsentimental proximity.
Something like an objective intimacy: a strange form of structural closeness, of
disembodied interiority, as if someone had kept intimacy (the only antidote to
art’s silly solemnity) but had removed any trace of subjectivity and affectivity
from it. Thus what we are left with is a familial relation with details, but for
people without a family, or without the illusion of a satisfying whole.
The objective intimacy at stake here is just for us, for all of us, exhausted
modernists, late history survivors, lucid humans who feel sorry for what there
is. And remember, the whole is nothing, details are everything: it is only at that
scale that things can actually happen, that they may change, vary and transform
us and the world. The only revolution might be a tiny one. Tiny revolutions
might be the only ones. What they require is obstinacy, desire, local skills, and a
profoundly political take on the insignificant. But such revolutions are rare, rare
enough to be worth noticing.
Paris, March 2015
Marco Maggi takes on the very paradox of inscription and traces and
magnificently overthrows it. He does this by carving and cutting the
insignificant into a trace, the vacuum into an archive, the shadow into an
alphabet, the detail into a cosmos.
Paper is the best of all materials to do this, as paper has invaded our world,
has infiltrated every aspect of our present. Even the chronic financial crisis we
live in, recalls Maggi, is about paper, the excess of paper: nothing paperless
here, as we are confronted with an invasion of papers, from bankruptcies to
loans to new contracts, with death and debt by and on paper.
Beyond matter, what is happening on the walls is also a “certain process
of unknowing,” a “very precise form of confusion,” a “committed type of
François Cusset is a writer, intellectual historian, and professor of American
Studies at the University of Paris Nanterre, he teaches critical theory at MACBA
Barcelona, Spain and ECAL Lausanne, Switzerland. Among his books available in
English are French Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 2008) and The Inverted
Gaze (Arsenal Pulp, 2011). He has published two novels, Anywhere out of the
world (ed. P.O.L., 2012) and Days and days (ed. P.O.L., 2015).
Marco Maggi: elegía a lo imperceptible
Alacia Haber 2014
Marco Maggi, emerge a fines de la década del 90. Ahora acaba de ser distinguido con el Premio Figari y elegido para representar al Uruguay en la Bienal de
Venecia.
El suyo es un arte discreto, intelectual, objetual y conceptual a la vez. Es paradojal e incitante y está en permanente juego con los contrastes y diálogos entre
lo artificial, lo natural, lo científico, lo orgánico, el mundo, el ser humano, lo microcósmico y lo macrocósmico y también con la realidad subjetiva del artista.
Maggi se concentra en el intimismo y en la visión atenta, escrupulosa. Lo atraen
los objetos insignificantes. Sobre soportes diversos, incluidos la arcilla, las manzanas naturales, el aluminio, el papel de diferentes orígenes, usando dibujo y
grabado a punta seca, cortes, con una maestría manual y una pericia reconocida,
explora el detalle mínimo. Tesauriza lo minúsculo, lo infinitesimal y lo imperceptible
Marco Maggi, apuesta a la cercanía, la intimidad, y a generar contrastes entre
lo visto y lo invisible. Lo conmueven los objetos insignificantes unidos por una
sintaxis espacial, especial y minuciosa. Le importa generar un recorrido que mantiene el interés en la lectura de los dibujos e incisiones. Le interesa el proceso
y los materiales y no crear mensajes unívoco y explícito. Rechaza lo didáctico.
Maggi opta por lo menos grandilocuente y subraya el valor de lo “insignificante”.
Define a sus obras como ¨archivos imperceptibles¨. Todas ellas están creadas por
materiales muy prosaicos y muy accesibles sin valor intrínseco ni necesariamente
soporte artístico. Sobre esos soportes opera con dibujo y grabado a punta seca
o cortes y las características más evidentes de esas operaciones son la maestría
manual y la pericia para explorar esas técnicas. Le interesa el detalle mínimo.
Delicado, íntimo, creador de una taquigrafía especial, obsesivo con los detalles
Maggi es un creador muy singular. Y aún cuando hace una una enorme instalación en el suelo y en las paredes es casi imperceptible por su blancura .
microwave, no hay tiempo que perder. Por lo menos, sugiere el artista, que
sea el arte que se detenga y nos detenga un poco, nos obligue a enlentecer
el paso, nos comprometa a una actitud más intimista, reflexiva y contemplativa. Su arte es una respuesta a toda la cantidad enorme de estímulos que
inundan al ser humano.Su propia manera de crear es una respuesta. Dibuja obsesivamente durante
horas y horas sin apuro, con intensidad, sin apostar a la velocidad ni la eficacia
instantánea, su cuerpo duele, su mano queda quebrantada después de tantas
horas: nada como ese trabajo para intensificar la sensación corporal y desafiar
a las máquinas.
Establece una relación del cuerpo humano con lo más invisible y pequeño, en
primer lugar cuando él mismo trabaja y segundo lugar cuando enfrenta sus
obras al espectador quien tiene que acercarse para ver algo, debe agacharse
o desplazarse muy suavemente y con cuidado por el espacio.
Maggi quiere superar la distancia y la velocidad de hoy. Cree que la paciencia
es la ciencia de la paz. Su obra requiere y genera calma, sosiego, serenidad,
lentitud, tranquilidad.
Es del tipo de persona que lo que más le interesante de los restaurantes de
comida rápida son las bandejas, los vasos, envases y las servilletas, es decir
todo eso que considera ¨ fósiles recientes¨.Todo campo visual es un sitio apto
para la excavación arqueológica. Cada marca, línea, punto, mancha o guión
encierra múltiples propósitos. ¨Toda superficie justifica nuestra atención mas
distinguida¨, explica
Con sus postulaciones visuales Maggi dice Stop a la marginalización de los
sentidos, apela a la victoria del reduccionismo y, cree que la delicadeza es
una actividad subversiva .
Una actividad subversiva
Slow Art
Con esas operaciones crea tramas que se pueden leer aunque no están destinadas a dar una información precisa al espectador. Maggi quiere reducir la trasmisión de más información .
Si los espectadores están apurados tendrán que volver otro día con más paciencia apreciar sus postulaciones visuales en las exposiciones. Porque este no
es fast art, es slow art .
En la vida actual lo digital invade, estamos rodeados de un mundo de aparatos
programables entre los que se encuentran el microondas y el freezer, símbolos
de rapidez y eficacia. Son metáfora de una vida que hace un culto de lo instantáneo. La domesticidad está tecnificada: los alimentos van directo del freezer al
En sus postulaciones visuales se puede encontrar polaroid, marcos de diapositivas, en el suelo blancos de papel con incisiones, un marco de cuadro sin
pintura solo con superficie blanca, marcos más pequeños en los que se juega
el negro y el banco y las incisiones diminutas, y una o más grandes con man-
zanas grabadas, resmas de papel común y corriente perfectamente ordenadas, n conjunto de marcos de diapositivas vacíos o con imágenes grabadas en
papel de aluminio, lápices creando una idiosincrásica obra casi tridimensional.
Marco Maggi es contestatario frente a la indigestión producida por de tanta
televisión, tantos noticieros de 24 horas al día, tanta electrónica, tantas
computadoras, tantos celulares, y tantos mecanismos de aparatosa.Con esas
operaciones crea tramas que se pueden leer aunque no están destinadas a
dar una información precisa al espectador. Maggi quiere reducir la trasmisión
de más información ya que su obra es de alguna manera una respuesta a
toda la cantidad enorme de estímulos que inundan al ser humano de hoy, es
un enfrentameniento a la polución visual, y auditiva del que utilizamos pero no
entendemos. Maggi sostiene que todo somos nuevos analfabetos y que por
ello tenemos que tomarle simpatía a lo insignificante y a la intimidad.Expresa
Maggi en una carta a esta autora:” la tijera era el icono que representaba a la
censura en el siglo XX. El objetivo era recortar la información, limitarla restando noticias.La censura actual multiplica las noticias hasta niveles intolerables,
las hace añicos y nos expone a un bombardeo de datos puntuales, parciales,
ilegibles. Tanta percusión de noticias impide toda repercusión.Estamos condenados a conocer más y entender menos: somos víctimas de una indigestión
semiótica paralizante.Cuando la dosis de información supera determinados
niveles la respuesta adecuada se hace imposible.Ejemplo: Una foto de baja
resolución nos es suficiente para reconocer rápidamente a una persona. En
cambio, un pelo no nos permite a simple vista la identificación de su titular.
No somos capaces de expandir el archivo pelo.zip a pesar de que contenga
mucha más información que una foto (en una micra de pelo hay información
suficiente para reproducir a su dueño en sus detalles más íntimos: clonación).
Esta incapacidad de leer archivos complejos es una nueva forma de ceguera o
analfabetismo”.
Papeles
En HOTBED más blanco, hay que tener la tenacidad de acercarse para ver
las mínimos intervenciones realizadas en los papeles. El visitante penetra en
un inmaculado espacio que parece vacío de obras de arte y lleno de papeles,
todo el suelo está tapizado de ellos y para entrar, como en una casa japonesa,
hay que sacarse el calzado, luego se camina en una inesperada alfombra muy
suave de papeles. Pero en realidad lo vacío está lleno. En forma discreta, seguro. El espectador no encuentra empero una superficie igual y pareja, camina
entre nubes blancas y descubre obstáculos mínimos , señales que inviten a
caminar con cuidado y prestarle atención a lo insignificante. Hay que caminar despacio pues se puede tropieza con elevaciones de papel, con resmas
oblicuas. Un ámbito para sentirse grande y lento : la delicadeza como atentado personal, subversivo.
El tránsito es fundamental y lo realizan personas indiscretas que quieren
descubrir algo y se encuentran con una información mínima o discreta
Porque en el piso hay resmas de papel carta . La hoja de arriba de cada resma
presenta un dibujo de papel sobre papel, el artista marca la primera hoja con
incisiones y genera pliegues que se elevan produciendo discontinuidades que
solo son visibles si los espectadores se agachan.
Pueden ser entendidas como micro esculturas que están en el borde entre la
bidimensionalidad y la tridimensionalidad. Es un umbral entre el arte y la nada,
entre la creación y la ceguera . Las personas se integran al paisaje inmaculado
y aportan un efecto de escala contundente : por un lado hay una obra mínima
y por otro lado observador monumental.
Dibujos y diapositivas
Manzanas
Usa una técnica de punta seca para cortar las manzanas , crea una grafía
de escala milimétrica (micro), cicatrices superficiales, incisiones mínimas,
marcas muy suaves (soft). Luego los frutos se secan y van cambiando hasta
quedar como fósiles con pieles añejas y originales formas. Se achican y tienen
interesantes pliegues y arrugas. Micro & Soft en Manzanas Mcintosh, título
que alude a la clase de manzanas, a los cortes minúsculos y suaves en ellas y
al nombre de elementos relacionados con la computación. A través del calado
de la cáscara, la manzana se deshidrata lentamente y envejece sin el menor
síntoma de descomposición .
Es una propuesta que alude a dos realidades, la natural y la técnica, a través
de la manzana que es un fruto emblema de una de las grandes compañías
de computación (MacIntosh). Maggi busca manzanas reales del tipo Mcintosh (una especie típica del norte de los Estados Unidos) dibuja con punta
seca dejando huellas , incisiones y molduras de manera tenue y delicada . Las
computadoras por ahora no emiten olor, las manzanas de Marco Maggi sí: son
fósiles perfumados. La naturaleza triunfa y Maggi evoca no solo el fruto y su
vida sino como en mayo los bosques de manzanos de los bellísimos campos
de New Paltz (estado de Nueva York) son una experiencia que él considera
radical.
En el caso de los dibujos sobre aluminio enmarcados como diapositivas el
espectador encuentra algo que lo descoloca y además tiene que acercarse
mucho para ver de que se trata sino ve más los marcos y la pared que la
propia obra. Aproximarse es indispensable. Entonces al dar unos pasos, lo
que encuentra le sugiere un alfabeto Braille, una extraña escritura o signos
indescifrables más para ser tocados que leídos.
Maggi obliga al intimismo y a la visión demorada, atenta, escrupulosa. Hay
que escudriñar. Luego de ese proceso se comienza a descubrir poco a poco
imágenes. Sugieren centros superpoblados, densos, zonas abiertas, áreas que
se escapan a todo control, avenidas y calles laterales, centros y periferias,
urbe y suburbios. Podría ser la vista aérea de una ciudad, pero si se observa
bien, es más enigmático, es un tipo de mapa, pero no se sabe que representa.
Circuitos de computación es una respuesta posible. Antiguos centros rituales
de civilizaciones perdidas podría ser otra. Hay quienes creen ver diagramas
meticulosos de cerebros cibernéticos mientras otros optan por estructuras
atómicas o partículas del mundo de la física. Las obras pueden ser leídas
también como autorretratos de su sistema nervioso, como fantasías despertadas por sistemas de circuitos integrados, o biología de ciencia ficción. Maggi
muestra una cartografía que sugiere múltiples lecturas que se bifurcan, en
un planteo tal vez inspirado en lecturas de Jorge Luis Borges. No hay dibujo
reconocible aunque la gente cree ver cosas..
En definitiva son mapas y la idea de mapa es esencial al arte de hoy. Lo
tecnológico no se puede tocar pero la obra de arte sí y el artista invita a
explorar lo táctil cuando crea con relieve estructuras de reminiscencias tecnológicas sobre papel de aluminio.
En algunos momentos es evidente que está, entre otras cosas, inspirado en
los circuitos integrados y en las conexiones electrónicas, en los módulos de
microchip, en los minúsculos complejos de componentes que se produce con
un material como la silicona, en la tecnología de la interconexión, en la que
subsistemas están ligados por conductores y conectores. Maggi revela su interés complejo por ese mundo a través de paneles de marcos de diapositivas
que contienen hojas de aluminio grabadas en relieve diapositivas ciegas, otra
paradoja más en su mundo creativo. Subvierte un elemento comunicador del
arte, la diapositiva, la transforma en algo vacío o ciego. O la deja vacía en el
suelo con sus marcos o le incluye grabados en metal cambiando su propósito
clásico. Esto no se puede proyectar . Hay que acercarse y verlo, es real, no
virtual, no es una imagen sobre una pared es una obra de arte tocable. Y es
personal, íntima porque el artista mismo la ha hecho en forma delicada y con
un gran esfuerzo de proximidad, él y los espectadores tienen que estar en esa
cercanía, no hay manera de alejarse. El toque humano es inevitable.
El juego de palabras
Maggi nació en 1957 en un micro país y ha logrado interesar con su arte en
una macro ciudad, juega con los marcos y se llama Marco, como si el destino
lo hubiese elegido para el arte, invita a internase en un enorme espacio macro
pero en él hay que mirar lo más micro, diminuto, micrografías sobre blanco o
gris. Macintosh es una compañía de hardware pero él en realidad lo que hace
es grabar la manzana real llamada Mcintosh haciendo su propio softwork.
Techtonic” habla de lo tectónico vinculado a la tierra y a la corteza terrestre,
se refiere con “tech” a la tecnología y tal vez haya apuntes sobre la tonicidad
(“tonic”). Pero además la palabra técnico, tiene, de acuerdo a su origen griego
relaciones con la construcción, con el acto de hacer, con lo técnico y con lo
artístico y así quedan interrelacionadas varias realidades (techné, tektonikos
y technikos) como ya nos enseñaron los sabios helenos. en “Microcheap Dissemination”, juega con chip y cheap, o sea el elemento científico (microchip)
y lo barato (cheap). Hotbed quiere decir , incubadora, pero si se separa la
palabra, significa cama caliente. También alude a los semilleros empleados
en los viveros de plantas o como sitios para hacer el amor. El Silicon Baile díapositivo, alude al famoso Silicon Valley, y a la ceguera Silicon Braille, Maggi se
refiere a un diálogo digital, pero no hay que pensar que se trata de computadoras sino del los dedos, es decir de lo creado apenas en mínimos desplazamientos de los dedos índice y pulgar.
Así es el mundo imaginativo de Marco Maggi : un mundo de un ser reflexivo, la
realidad de un artista conceptual que trabaja con objetos, la circunstancia de
una personalidad que piensa, analiza y tiene una postura sobre lo que le pasa
a la civilización contemporánea.
Oximorónico, paradojal e incitante en permanente juego con los contrastes
y diálogos entre lo artificial, lo natural, lo científico, lo orgánico, el mundo, el
ser humano, lo microcósmico y lo macrocósmico y también con la realidad
subjetiva del artista.
Studio I, II, III 2014 -- adesivo branco sobre papel branco em plexi, tríptico/white stickers on white archival mat in plexiglas case, triptych -- 35 x 91 cm
Studio I, II, III 2014 -- detalhe/detail
Abecedario Venecia ( Paper Drawings DF) 2014 -- detalhe/detail
Marco Maggi: Lentissimo:
a conversation with Mary-Kay Lombino and Marco Maggi
January 2012
Marco Maggi, who is creating all new work for his upcoming exhibition Lentissimo, possesses a keen awareness of the tricks language often plays with logic.
His attentiveness to paradox and to the hazards of the constant race forward
in the name of progress is evident in his poetic approach to life and art. In a
recent interview, Mary-Kay Lombino, The Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard
B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Director for Strategic Planning, spoke to Maggi
about this approach as well as his influences, processes, and philosophies.
Mary-Kay Lombino (MKL): The materials you use are not typical fine art materials, but household items like aluminum foil, eyeglass lenses, parking mirrors, and
reams of paper. What attracts you to such materials?
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 the
space invisible. Our illegible world is global and myopic. Braking time and reducing the scale is my answer. No big solutions or urgent revolutions: my proposal is a homeopathic process. Person by person, step by step, inch by inch.
MKL: You must have extraordinary reserves of patience and dexterity to
achieve such minute detail in your work. Are these attributes you have always
had, or skills you had to acquire through practice in order to accomplish your
artistic objectives?
Marco Maggi (MM): Go slower and closer.
Speed is tragic in cars, arts, and malls. When I reduce my speed at Home Depot
or Stop & Shop, I always discover amazing surfaces: from Macintosh apple skin to
the silky back side of construction rulers. Each surface 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, returning to the
supermarket, can give a second chance or smile to Reynolds foil rolls.
MM: If you trust in slow politics you must exercise humor and patience. Waiting… I try to build a second reality.
MKL: The attention to detail in your works conveys the craftsmanship of the
hand-made, yet they begin with objects that are industrially fabricated. This
seems to set up a tension in your work because they are both high-tech and lowtech at the same time. Which aspect do you embrace more?
MM: Yes, yes! That is the center of my protocol mutation proposal. Nowadays
delicacy becomes a subversive activity because we love terahertz and long-distance lives. Fast viewers see, from far away, a drawing as a blank sheet. Slow
viewers can read ten times more in the same drawing, switching perspective
and conclusions many more times. My main focus is not the object or the subject. I focus on the time between the object and the viewer. I am interested in
the specific protocol of manners and pace in the viewing process.
MM: Digital!
Industry will never create a more digital tool than a hand: five digits instead of
only zeros and ones. I love computers because they go faster and faster to allow
us to go lentissimo.
Tension is a key word for me: tension between cold materials and personal hand,
tension between text and texture, or between macro and micro.
I can find many dichotomies and tensions but not one specific intention in my
work; I am only suggesting some protocol mutations.
MKL: You have a talent for transforming the artistic gesture into tightly controlled, almost obsessive mark making. How do you attain such control? Do you
use mathematical systems to work out your compositions, or are your drawings
all free form?
MKL: Many of your works are quiet and understated and invite slow observation in order to discover some of the gems hidden in the details. Do you
intentionally make art that unravels slowly as the viewer experiences the work
more closely?
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 of
your works?
MM: Building a second reality needs a lot encoding and planning. A language
hotbed 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 text with
no hope of being informative. It’s not a thread; it is training to stimulate our
empathy for insignificance.
In recent years I have been working on a series titled The Ted Turner Collection from CNN to DNA. The project started by thinking about the word
“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 we cannot recognize the difference
between live transmission and death. We are familiar with the DNA structure or
genome alphabet but we cannot read 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 of information 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
ourselves to the fact that we are doomed to knowing more and understanding
less—victims of semiotic indigestion. The extreme percussion of news prevents
any repercussion of the news. An overdose of drama is the perfect anesthetic, a
tool for censorship that is more efficient than a pair of scissors. We are setting
up a society of dysfunctional information.
MKL: Your Hotbeds remind me of Felix-Gonzales Torres’s stacks of posters or
photocopies on the one hand, and on the other hand they recall tiny abstract
monuments strategically placed in the center of miniature city plazas. Which do
you relate more to, the simple yet powerful gestures Torres made on the floor of
art galleries and museums or the more grand achievement of erecting sculpture
in a public space?
MM: Influence is always invisible to its victims. I know that I really love Felix and
his generous art dissemination, dynamics, and sublime contamination.
My Hotbed series is related to tectonic archives and books profiles. They are
static landscapes in transition between constructing and demolishing, between
models and ruins. The American ream is a paper-like micro sculpture and pedestal
all in one.
Fanfold: Hardware x Software 2013 -- cortes e dobraduras em folhas sulfite/ cuts and folds on paper -- dimensões variáveis/variable dimensions
Fanfold: Hardware x Software 2013 -- detalhe/detail
From Huguenot to Microwave: new and recent works by Marco Maggi
Samuel Dorsky Museum
curated by Brian Wallace, 2011
Marco Maggi’s obsessively minimal yet coolly detailed artworks are studies in
perception and materiality that reflect back, metaphorically and physically, on
the viewer. Maggi’s use of objects, techniques, and references evokes, but never
makes explicit, the connections between culture, power, and the image that are
the subject matter of much recent contemporary art.
The artist’s works reveal the attention to detail, focus on process, and openness
to chance developments and accidental outcomes that are so common (and so
necessary) to printmaking. The focus on detail and process was Maggi’s primary
interest as a student and is a continued thread in his work to date. The artist’s
work is distinguished by visual and physical swapping of images, the employment
of support materials as central components, and the leakage of imagery onto
peripheral or subsidiary sections. These characteristics, coupled with an intensity
of production that is too well organized to be obsessive but too extensive to be
immediately graspable, are the hallmarks of an artist who has both submitted
to and surmounted the rich technical and metaphorical landscape of the print
medium.
A long series of stacks of paper cut with elaborately modest care divides one half
of the gallery from the other, mimicking the operation of a printing press and, at
one metaphorical remove, the production of art itself—and at another remove,
that of artists themselves. An art museum at a BFA- and MFA-awarding university
cannot help but comment upon the means of production of a commodity—art
students—and this work expresses the tensions inherent in the relationship between museum and studio spaces (and between the didactic and the educational
modes those spaces oscillate between).
Time-lapse video collapses the life cycle of an apple—a humble New Paltz specimen (and visual simile for the town)—into a cosmically concise epigraph for life
itself. The apple becomes origin of temptation, the temptation of originality, and
the source and inspiration of sin and beauty both—“oh apple of my eye,” a poet
might have declaimed, fumbling for the pause button we never press quite at the
right time.
A surveillance mirror is decorated with—and its ostensible users’ gazes are
disrupted by—skeins of tiny lines. Here, the viewer is an unwitting link between
a shape/image that distortedly contains 1) the museum displaying itself as a possibly paranoid and/or pathetically pointless panopticon, 2) a Google Maps-worthy
cluster of cuts and clearings connoting a conurbation of mega-metropolitan complexity, and, 3) visuality itself. It is not so simple to “just look,” this work quietly
insists.
Eyeglass lenses are augmented with—and compromised, functionally, by—angularly organic webs of spidery cuts. The lenses, worn by the artist during his time
in New Paltz as a graduate student (from “Huguenot” [his address in the village]
to “Microwave” [his first New York show) filtered every single thing he saw and
made during that formative period. They are as precious as—and they and their
reflections and shadows stand, modestly, in for—vision itself. Here is a self-por-
trait of the artist in a reflective mood; an experiment—by the researcher, upon
himself—in transparency and the limits of legibility.
And the ridiculously beautiful works of burnished, cut, and drawn-upon foil,
paper, Plexiglas, and clayboard. The aluminum foil panel, so carefully burnished and so delicately limned, is Malevich-like in its geometric/totemic, aluminum-fuselaged aerial perspective. Some drawings are slumping or stalking
or sneaking off of their proper surfaces onto mats and glazing and supports,
muddling hierarchies of value and making people bend, straighten, peer,
and—how presumptuous—work for their visual reward. Or they are calmly and
quietly offering their daringly archaic, even, dare I write it, “primitive” (a term
that’s probably the third rail of Latin American post-conceptualism) affect of
delicate firm lines cut into matte-finish off-white clay tablets.
Maggi’s approach to artmaking is suffused with self-awareness and knowledge
of international developments—he has modern and contemporary Latin American and North American and European and Asian and African art down. But
these cultural raw materials are only very gently and very indirectly revealed
in individual works. There are no direct references to Uruguay’s topography or
artistic heritage or political history. However, the topsy-turvy visual strategies, the inside-out deployment of forms, and the recurring use of reflective
materials all hearken to the askew position occupied by any artist from Latin
America who doesn’t completely surrender his or her identity.
Words—mine, anyway—cannot operate at the massively parallel speed of
Maggi’s works, which zoom in from conceptual/art-historical head-fakes at
modernism’s various above- and below-the-equator manifestations and outcomes to expose deftly assimilated but instantly legible references to artists
as wide-ranging as Fred Sandback and Lucio Fontana, Zul Solar and Sol LeWitt,
and Sarah Sze and John Baldessari, or even Mark Tobey and Carlos Cruz-Díez.
I do not understand this exhibition, but I do know that I am privileged—and
thrilled—to be this close to such an intelligent dissection and sensitively
hesitant reassembly of the world. This exhibition reveals how one man—and,
maybe, the rest of us—addresses a world in which former Uruguayan dictators
reappear thirty years later, while art markets reinflate, while technology exacerbates the gaps between people, while buds swell in an ever-warming world,
and while skill, we are told, supplants care.
Flat Pencil (4B lead) 2014 -- grafite sobre grafite, acrílico/graphite on graphite in plexi case -- 35 x 27 cm
Flat pencil 2014 -- grafite sobre grafite tamanho papel carta/graphite on graphite tablet, on letter size format -- 27,9 x 21,5 cm
Motherboard 2014 -- grafite sobre grafite tamanho papel carta/graphite on graphite tablet, on letter size format -- 27,9 x 21,5 cm
Slow foil 2008 -- lápis sobre alumínio/pencil on aluminum -- 71 x 55,8 cm
Grafito 2009 -- grafite sobre grafite/graphite on graphite -- 27,5 x 35 cm
Sharper (H4) 2008 -- pó de grafite sobre placa de acrílico sobre minas de grafite/graphite dust on acrylic plate on graphite mounds -- 3 x 18 x 11,5 cm
Reynolds wrap (SP) 2008 -- alumínio e rolo de papel alumínio (Reynolds)/etching needle, aluminium paper -- 5 x 30,4 x 5 cm
Sliding 2008
lápis sobre alumínio e molduras de slide/
pencil on aluminum and slide holders
74 x 58,5 cm
Fast viewer (SP) 2008 -- ponta-seca sobre Yupo/dry point on Yupo -- 50,8 x 121,8 cm
Fast viewer (SP) 2008 -- detalhe/detail
Plexi Line 2013 -- cortes em acrílico/x-acto knife cuts on polycast plexiglas. -- 80 x 157 cm
DDD Drawing 2008
recortes em papel/cuts on paper -- 92 x 61 cm
detalhe/detail
1 title 9 tiles 2008
grafite sobre cerâmica/graphite on ceramic tiles -- 73,5 x 58,5 cm
Tablet 2014
lápis sobre cerâmica tamanho papel carta/pencil on ceramic, letter size -- 27,9 x 21,5 cm
Hipo real (SP) 2008
incisões a estilete sobre cubos de acrílico/incisions on acrylic cubes -- dim variáveis/variable dim
Hipo real (SP) 2008
incisões a estilete sobre cubos de acrílico/incisions on acrylic cubes -- dim variáveis/variable dim
Hipo real (SP) 2008
incisões a estilete sobre cubos de acrílico/incisions on acrylic cubes -- dim variáveis/variable dim
Hipo real (SP) 2008
incisões a estilete sobre cubos de acrílico/incisions on acrylic cubes -- dim variáveis/variable dim
Marco Maggi (New York, USA) interview with Becky Hunter (Durham, UK) via
email between November 08 and February 09
.
Working in both small scale drawing/etching and in room-sized paper installations, Marco Maggi’s work has been said to evoke an architectural spectrum of
sources, from El Lissitzky to Zaha Hadid. Featured in the publication Vitamin D:
New Perspectives in Drawing, and in collections including that of the Museum of
Modern Art, New York, Maggi has exhibited extensively across North and South
America, Europe and Asia.
BH: “Maggi is not about walking on or picking up, but crouching down and looking at.” I found this quote about you from a 2003 Hosfelt Gallery press release.
It caught my eye because it described the way images of your work affect me,
drawing me down and in to explore detail, yet it is describing a large scale paper
installation, not something shy or tiny. Is this your intention for the work, to
draw people into quite an intimate viewing relationship?
MM: Scale changes the relationship between the viewer and the work. This
reduction of scale intends to humanize the visual arts. Fast viewers see, from
far away, a drawing as a blank sheet. Slow viewers can read the same drawing
ten times, switching perspectives and conclusions. My main issue is protocol;
my main focus is not the object or subject. I focus on the space in between the
object and the viewer. I am interested in the particular protocol of manners and
pace in the viewing process. To watch theater, a movie or video, or to hear a
symphony, you need to spend a specific amount of time with the work. For example, a three minutes fifteen seconds song requires three minutes and fifteen
seconds of your time. Reading a book is more flexible, but it is not completely
flexible, because it is impossible to read a novel in sixteen seconds, which is the
average amount of time spent by the public looking at a work of art in a museum. Drawings are not so much related to space as they are related to time: no
time frame is included in ‘drawing protocol’... the viewer is therefore free and
the challenge is to expand the freedom range from 16 seconds to 16 minutes or
16 hours.
BH: I wondered if that description I quoted is still relevant now or if your approach has changed in the past five years?
MM: My recent show at the Sicardi Gallery is entitled ‘Slow Politics’. ‘Slow Politics’ was also the title of the text written by Adriano Pedrosa for my September show at Nara Roesler (‘HypoReal’, San Paulo). So, yes I am still promoting
pauses.
BH: I’d now like to quote something that you have written that seems fitting
here. “We all feel a bit offside at the start of the 21st century, the only hope
available to us is unambitious and slow: hypo-hope.” Do you think slowness
(in artmaking or in life) is undervalued now?
MM: I really love MHz and computers. They save so much time: saved time that
allows us to go slowly. Computers deal with long distance very well; we need
to take better care of the short distances. Images and sound travel on the
internet; we need to take care of tactility, smell and taste. Computers work
with zeros and ones; we need to focus on the hand’s ten digits. Nothing is
more digital than a hand. I love the digital era in both interpretations of the
word: ‘hand’ and ‘binary’. We are ‘bit-niks’ and not reactionary or nostalgic.
I wouldn’t say that slowness is undervalued, as slowness is a great opportunity made possible by the fantastic speed of computers. If I have speed and
long distance on my laptop, then it enables me to have slowness and short
distance on my table top.
BH: You write beautifully, as though you are also taking time over phrases
and that allows you a deep expression - I’m having to read slowly to take it
in fully, which is a good thing. I watched the film on YouTube [link above] of
your installation being constructed and demolished, it was very poetic, all the
whiteness. And it did seem to slow people down a great deal, bending close
to see, perhaps suspending the usual viewing protocol for something more
careful and sustained. Is it your intention that the work is demolished by the
audience, or are some parts of it preserved other than in film? Or is the demolition the final act of the piece?
MM: I have no precise intentions about tensions between people and the
work, only expectations. I did very different versions of the same floor piece
in diverse cities and venues - from Montevideo to Gwanju, from Los Angeles
to Santiago de Chile or Bogota, from Madrid to San Paulo, from La Habana to
Washington or San Juan de Puerto Rico, from Pontevedra to Kansas City - in
biennials, galleries, museums there have been more than twenty examples.
People’s reactions are always very similar, but the traces left behind after
the exhibitions close are very different. The paper piece works like a slow
photo-sedimentation of the show, in that there could be a very clean context
and perfect conservation at the end, or a very aggressive environment with
interventions by the viewing public, such as hair, coffee, written messages,
lost objects, particles, etc. In some places the work survived like a collection
piece (Daros Colection, LA MOCA); in others it was destroyed after the show
(Buenos Aires Biennial). At the Hirshorn museum a child jumped on the piece;
at San Paulo Biennial some top sheets (that are cut into with engraved marks)
disappeared. In some cities I asked for a ‘non shoe’ sign; in others shoes were
allowed. At Josee Bienvenu (my New York gallery) shoes were allowed and two
friends added clean sheets of paper to erase shoe prints during the opening.
The video on YouTube is a document: it is not a phase of the piece. I really love
the response of the people documented, as they participated in constructing or
demolishing the piece. Mutations start before the installation of the floor piece:
the top sheets travel in a folder like a zip file to unzip on local paper reams.
BH: Why do you think drawing is not subject to the same time protocol as other
works of art? Is it not seen as such a serious or complete art form? Is it more
approachable or flexible?
MM: It was a ‘Drawing Inside’ era: drawing was working backstage, like art
interface, or bone structure in paintings and sculptures Now, drawing emerges
like the final tool to express precise confusions. Ninety percent of the actual
description of the Universe is based in mathematical metaphors. Numbers are
better than letters to describe abstract contexts. Drawing is the perfect media
to document the triumph of micro uncertainties or the demolition of big messages. When words or landscapes are no longer capable of naming or showing
systems, drawing becomes the protagonist. After the shock art of the early
1990s, the silences of drawing allow us to start again. Drawing can be slight like
a text or even less; drawing carries the notion of being pre-text, coming before
written language. Drawing is the perfect medium to emphasise or construct
emptiness: a type of writing that erases.
BH: Can you remember the first object you paid close attention to and how that
felt?
MM: It was a book and I was to young to know how to read it.
BH: So there’s a thread in your work that sees drawing as unknown language, or
standing in for an unknown language, that has the power to erase because of
its unknowable quality, to act as a blanket over what has come before?
MM: To draw is very similar to writing slowly in a language that you cannot
read: a text with no hope of being informative. It’s not a thread, it is training to
stimulate our empathy for insignificance.
BH: I’ve been fascinated with ancient languages for a long time and have collected several books on the subject, and started to learn some of the basics.
I felt there was some connection between being interested in art, particularly
drawing, and being interested in the cut and carved marks of cuneiform script,
for example. Would you agree that in both cases there is meaning to be uncovered? Or do you see mark-making in your work as only an erasure or slowing
down, or can it refer to many possible meanings?
MM: Cut and carved marks of ancient cuneiform scripts are the most beautiful
examples of new drawing. The genome alphabet is another example, and in a
way, the genome is older than cuneiform! They are both examples of an illegible language: an abstract alphabet and syntax, grammatical tension. They are
insignificant texts waiting for meaning (like a hook waits for a hat) in the sense
that most of us cannot understand them, their interpretation is still being
worked on. In the last four years I have been working around the word
‘cover’ and its sister words such as ‘coverage’. It’s interesting that the mass
media use the word ‘cover’ to mean the opposite: to show something, they
promise ‘complete coverage’. To link back to the idea of unknown languages, you could describe CNN coverage of the war or the elections as ‘cuneiform coverage’, covering up in the act of showing. My series title is ‘The
Ted Turner Collection from CNN to DNA’. The coverage is so efficient that
we cannot recognize the difference between live transmission and death. I
wrote:’We are familiar with the DNA structure but we cannot remember the
genome’s alphabet. I have only one question: is the inability to relate to this
type of information blindness or should it be described as a new form of
illiteracy? In both cases the most advisable thing to do is to patiently resign
ourselves to the fact that we are doomed to knowing more and understanding less -victims of semiotic indigestions. The extreme percussion of
news prevents any repercussion of the news. An overdose of drama is the
perfect anaesthetic, a tool for censorship that is more efficient than a pair
of scissors. We are setting up a society of dysfunctional information: reality
becomes illegible; and the visual arts become invisible.’
BH: You often make the point that micro and macro have similar visual
effects and also you compare ancient with up-to-date (preColumbian/postClintonian). Can you say anything further about this comparison of opposites? Are there political or geographical implications for you?
MM: The point of these pairs of opposites is the idea of unfocused information (in scale and time). Looking at the same drawing we can see different
things: is this a bird’s eye view of the urban fabric or is it micro computer
intimacy? Is this texture, textile or text? Is this archaology or statistics? We
cannot trust in our conclusions about drawing or reality. In this situation the
best reaction is to slow down. Nowadays speed is tragic in arts, diplomacy
and cars.
BH: Can you say something about your juxtaposition of delicate engraving/etching and ordinary, household objects, such as kitchen foil still in its
cardboard box, empire rulers and plain paper? This use of the everyday
and simple is taken to an incredibly detailed and poetic level in ‘Micro and
Soft on McIntosh Apples’, 1999, which uses a dry-point technique to make
minute drawings on the apples’ surface. Also, your careful use of language
comes into play here...
MM: I already talked about training our empathy for the indecipherable, that
drawings are texts that you cannot read. Similar training is conducted by
choosing insignificant objects, giving them a second chance, changing their
destiny from garbage containers to art collections. They have very beautiful
surfaces: the silky side of the aluminum foil, the McIntosh apple skin, coated
office paper, industrial graphite sheets, plexi-glass. If you see a drawing
on aluminum foil in a very important institution you will perhaps take more
care and time at the supermarket. Attention and delicacy are two subversive
activities in Walmart. My first video piece, in collaboration with Ken Solomon, show the biography of an apple. A photo with video vocation, a slow
perception test. One photo, every ten minutes, during 40 days, documenting
apple skin micro mutations.
BH: Do you have an interest in the tradition or history of drawing and etching,
or are these activities simply useful for your purposes? For example, Dana Self
compared your mapmaking impulse to that of Jan Vermeer.
MM: I did an MFA majoring in Printmaking at the State University of New York.
My interest was not in the print process. I focused on plates and particularly in
the threshold between two and three dimensions, using engraving and embossing. As I write today, I am engraving a plexi-glass sheet but I will not print
from it. I stop here. The framed plexi-plate projects a shadow on the paper.
The technique could be called printing with shadow. You see the projection but
you cannot see the real drawing on the plexi-glass. A spacer between the plexi
sheet and the back paper is a second referent to three dimensions. In fact,
the relationship between two and three dimensions is another very important
dichotomy. Jan Vermeer and Fred Sandback are my favourite artists, if that
helps you locate where my interests lie. I did my first print edition last year. I
was invited by The Drawing Center in New York for the 25th Anniversary of the
institution. I worked with Greg Burnett, a master printer and a master friend.
BH: Do you enjoy the physical processes of art making?
MM: It is my full-time job and my life’s work. Process is my concept and my purpose, the work’s origin and its goal. The most important phase in that process
is not to warm up my hand before returning to the drawing, it is the viewer’s
process of art-making that is the vital stage.
Frozen ream [Resma congelada] # 2 2011 -- incisões sobre resma de acrílico/plexi reams -- 21.5 x 27.9 cm cada/each
Drop 2012
incisões sobre bloco de acrílico/incisions on acrylic block -- 10 x 10 x 10 cm
Drop 2012
incisões sobre bloco de acrílico/incisions on acrylic block -- 10 x 10 x 10 cm
Hypo real 2009
incisões sobre 04 cubos de acrílico/
cuts on 04 plexiglass cubes -- 25 x 22 x 27 cm
Circulante 2012
cortes em acrílico/cuts on acrylic -- ø 20 x 5 cm
Points of view 2010-2012
cortes em acrílico/cuts on acrylic -- 15 x 5 x 5 c m
vista da instalação/installation view -- West vs East, 2014
Diaporama (SP) 2012 -- cortes em 900 folhas de papel de 35 mm em molduras de slide/
cuts on 900 35 mm paper sheets on slide mounts -- ed unique/unique edition -- 150 x 150 cm
Diaporama (SP) 2012 -- detalhe/detail
Monochrome (solar yellow) 2014 -- cortes em 225 folhas de papel de 35 mm em molduras de slide/cuts on 225 35 mm paper sheets on slide mounts -- 75 x 75 cm -- detalhe/detail
White sliding 2011 -- cortes em 324 papéis de 35 mm em moldura de slide/cuts on 324 35 mm papers -- 91,5 x 91,5 cm -- detalhe/detail
Independent red 2011
12 unidades de pilhas de slides/12 slide stacks units
ed unique -- 21 x 15 x 5 cm
Arco 2012 -- cortes em 150 folhas de papel de 35mm em moldura de slide/cuts on 150 35mm paper (150 slide mounts stacks) -- 10 metros por 5 x 2 cm/10 meters by 5 x 2 cm
Kodak Square 2012
carrossel de 80 slides Kodak/carrousel with 80 Kodak slides -- Ø 25 cm
Reflexos 2012
cortes em papel A4/cuts on A4 paper -- 21 x 29,7 cm cada
Reflexos 2012
cortes em papel A4/cuts on A4 paper -- 21 x 29,7 cm cada
Reflexos 2012
cortes em papel A4/cuts on A4 paper -- 21 x 29,7 cm cada
Stacking Quotes 2012
7 cadernos com recortes em adesivos/cutting stickers on 7 Cachet notebooks -- 22 x 14 x 18 cm
Slow Poltics
Adriano Pedrosa - 2008
Slow Politics
Adriano Pedrosa - 2008
“O exame de uma resma da melhor qualidade de papel branco prova que é
impossível encontrar uma folha absolutamente branca e silenciosa dentre 500
exemplares.” - Marco Maggi
“Examining a ream of the best-quality white paper proves that it is impossible
to find a single absolutely white, silent sheet in 500 examples.” Marco Maggi
O grande movimento visual do século 20 é o da velocidade. Ela transforma
radicalmente a paisagem, a cidade, a arquitetura e as coisas; se não as banaliza, ao menos as simplifica visualmente. Com a invenção e a popularização
do automóvel, o sujeito pode deslocar-se rapidamente pela cidade e seu olhar
percorre as ruas e estradas em alta velocidade. Sua experiência visual e perceptiva transforma-se completamente. A partir de então, o sujeito não é mais
capaz de perceber, por exemplo, os detalhes de ornamentação e acabamento
das casas e dos edifícios típicos da era pré-moderna. A fachada e a paisagem
precisam simplificar-se para serem percebidas pelos olhos que passam por ela
com rapidez. A arquitetura e o paisagismo modernistas, com suas linhas retas
e superfícies planas, são, em grande medida, uma resposta à aceleração. Nesse
panorama, a rapidez e a banalização do olhar e da visualidade se tornam uma
ameaça para a decadência estética. O risco: a arquitetura e o urbanismo de
grandes fachadas como cartoon ou caricatura, que podem ser compreendidos
e apreciados com um só lance de olhos. A velocidade também encontra ímpeto
avassalador na mídia – na televisão, na internet, na globalização. A ocorrência
de notícias deve ser adequada a seu consumo diário e mediático, o que dá lugar
ao fenômeno da produção (em oposição ao relato) de notícias. Na contramão
desse movimento encontra-se a arte – antiga, moderna ou contemporânea. A
despeito da multiplicação desenfreada de obras, exposições, feiras, coleções,
museus, bienais e trienais, a arte insiste em demandar uma desaceleração, uma
pausa (a exceção talvez seja Andy Warhol, que, em certa medida, incorporou a
multiplicação e a aceleração em sua obra, embora sejam necessários tempo e
dedicação para compreender isso).
The great movement of the 20th century is velocity. Speed radically transforms landscape, city, architecture, and things; and, if it does not banalize
them, it visually simplifies them. Thanks to the invention and disseminated use
of the automobile, people travel rapidly across the city and their gazes scan
streets and highways at high speed. Their visual and perceptive experience is
completely transformed. On account of the swift motion, the individual can
no longer perceive the finishing and decorative details on façades of premodern houses and other buildings, for example. Façade and landscape must
be simplified so they can be captured by the gaze that fleetingly scans them.
The modernist architecture and landscape design of straight lines and flat
surfaces are to a great extent a response to acceleration. Within this scenario,
the swiftness and the banalization of gaze and visuality pose a threat to
aesthetic decadence. The risk: an architectural design and an urban planning might appear that will introduce large cartoon- or caricature-like façades
which can be understood and appreciated at a single glance. Speed is also
given a compelling impetus in such media as television, the Internet, and other
globalized networks. The amount of events must also supply the media’s daily
consumption, thereby spawning news production rather than reports. Going
against the grain, in this case, we have ancient, modern or contemporary art.
Notwithstanding the unbridled multiplication of art works, shows, fairs, collections, museums, and biennial and triennial exhibitions, art insists in demanding
a slowdown, a pause. (Possibly the exception is Andy Warhol, who to a certain
extent incorporated multiplication and acceleration in his work; but one needs
time and dedication to fully understand this.).
A obra de Marco Maggi (Montevidéu, 1957) finca trincheiras nesse embate com
a velocidade. “O papel é meu propósito. O tempo, assim como o foco, é meu
meio predileto”, afirmou o artista. Seu trabalho consiste em finos, precisos,
delicados e sutis desenhos (às vezes feitos mesmo sem grafite ou tinta) de
intrincados padrões, em geral abstratos e geométricos, mas que remetem a
The work of Marco Maggi (Montevideo, 1957) opens trenches in this clash with
speed. “Paper is my purpose. Time, plus focus, is my preferred medium,” the
artist stated. His work consists of finely traced, accurate, delicate and subtle
drawings (at times rendered without graphite or ink) of intricate patterns that
albeit being abstract and geometric, relate to architectural designs, networks,
arquiteturas, grades, teias, paisagens, mapas ou diagramas – reais, imaginários,
fabulosos ou idealizados. O desenho de Maggi assume diferentes meios: em
grafite sobre papel ou sobre o passe partout da própria moldura (como em San
Andreas Fault, 2008); feito com ponta seca em papel alumínio, que por sua vez é
apresentado emoldurado (como em Slow Foil, 2008), enquadrado por molduras
de slides (como em Sliding, 2008) ou no próprio rolo do laminado; em incisões
sobre acrílico (como em Slow Shadow, 2008, no qual, sob a luz, os riscos no
acrílico transparente que emoldura o quadro geram finas linhas de sombra no
papel em branco), ou sobre pilhas de papel. As obras são, em geral, de pequenas
dimensões (e, quando são no caso de grandes instalações, são compostas por
um conjunto de várias pilhas de papéis que dificilmente são percebidas de longe),
feitas com paciência, concentração, atenção ao detalhe e precisão. Aqui, não há
gestos bruscos, violentos, grandiosos e expressivos. Embora haja excesso. Nesse
contexto, é preciso se aproximar das obras para compreender o microuniverso,
pequeno e vasto, que elas contêm. Não por acaso, os trabalhos de Maggi são
difíceis de ser reproduzidos e registrados em fotografia; é preciso vê-los ao vivo,
inspecionar sua superfície, sua linha, seu corte, sua sombra, seu relevo, sua
transparência.
landscapes, maps or grids, whether they be real, imaginary, fabulous or
idealized. Maggi’s drawing resorts to different media that include graphite
on paper and graphite on the passe-partout of the picture frame (such
as in San Andreas Fault, 2008); dry point on aluminum foil, which in turn
is framed (such as in Slow Foil, 2008), or framed in slide mounts (such as
in Sliding, 2008) or yet framed on the foil roll itself; making incisions on
acrylic (such as in Slow Shadow, 2008, in which the light shining on lines
incised on the transparent plexiglas frame casts fine shadow lines on the
blank paper), or on piles of paper. By and large, Maggi’s works are small
(even the large installations that he creates are made up of numerous
piles of paper that can hardly be distinguished from the distance); they
are patiently made with precision and careful attention to detail. There
are no sudden, violent, expansive, or expressive gestures. Although there
is excess. In this context, one needs to view the works from up close to
understand the small and vast micro-universe that they contain. Not by
chance, Maggi’s works are difficult to reproduce or record in photography.
One should strive to view them live and to inspect their surface, line, cut,
shadow, relief and transparency.
Desacelerar, demanda-nos Maggi. A referência surge mais obviamente em
dois de seus títulos, em São Paulo: Slow Foil (Papel Alumínio Vagaroso) e Slow
Shadow (Sombra Vagarosa). Surge também em Sliding (Deslizando, que, no original em inglês, remete ao objeto slide, cuja moldura é utilizada na obra), onde
o slide evoca o still ou o fotograma, a suspensão do movimento cinemático. A
desaceleração surge também, de forma mais oblíqua, porém penetrante, em uma
série que o artista desenvolve desde 2005 denominada The Ted Turner Collection – from CNN to the DNA (A Coleção Ted Turner – da CNN ao DNA). O título
refere-se, ironicamente, ao norte-americano Ted Turner, um dos mais celebrados
magnatas da mídia, conhecido por ser o fundador da rede de televisão a cabo
CNN, que revolucionou o mercado de consumo, distribuição e fabricação de
notícias. Com essa série, Maggi cruza diferentes velocidades – da vida, da mídia,
da globalização, da arte. Nas palavras do artista: “Em Da CNN ao DNA, eu foco
minha atenção na leitura de superfícies sem que eu tenha a menor esperança
de me informar sobre elas. Todos os dias estamos condenados a saber mais e
compreender menos.” Nos trabalhos da série, Maggi se apropria de reproduções
de obras de grandes artistas modernos – como Jasper John, Sol Lewitt, Lucio
Fontana, Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian e Robert Ryman –, vira a imagem de
costas para o espectador, adiciona pilhas de papéis a ela e então realiza cortes
na superfície, criando pequenos relevos em papel e revelando, aqui e ali, filamentos e fragmentos das obras-prima ocultas. O resultado, em geral, assume características de uma grade minimalista quase que completamente branca – com
exceção dos pequenos fragmentos e filamentos coloridos das obras apropriadas.
O título individual de cada um dos trabalhos faz outra referência ao perverso
mundo da mídia, no qual muito se mostra e pouco se vê: Complete Coverage
(Cobertura Completa). Para São Paulo Maggi trouxe “coberturas completas” de
Maggi asks us to slow down. The reference comes up more obviously in
two of his titles shown in São Paulo: Slow Foil, and Slow Shadow. It also
comes up in Sliding, a work made up of photo slide mounts, thus evoking
a photogram or still, i.e., the suspension of the cinematic movement. The
slowdown also appears in a more oblique, though penetrating manner in
a series that the artist has been developing since 2005 named The Ted
Turner Collection—From CNN to the DNA. The title is an ironic reference to
celebrated U.S. media tycoon Ted Turner, the highly influential developer of
the television news station Cable News Network (CNN) that revolutionized
the market of news fabrication, broadcasting, and consumption. With this
series, Marco Maggi intersects different speeds in life, in the media and in
the globalization of art. In his own words, “From CNN to the DNA, I focus
my attention on reading surfaces without the minor hope to get informed.
Every day, we are condemned to know more and understand less.” In the
works of this series, Maggi appropriates reproductions of works by modern
masters Jasper Johns, Sol Lewitt, Lucio Fontana, Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian and Robert Ryman—, turns the work with its back to the viewer, adds
piles of paper to it, and then slits its surface, creating small paper reliefs
and sparsely revealing filaments and fragments of hidden masterpieces.
The overall result boasts characteristics of a nearly all-white minimalist
grid, except for the small color fragments and filaments of the appropriated works. The title of each individual work relates to the perverse realm
of the media, in which much is shown but little is actually seen: Complete
Coverage. Maggi has brought to São Paulo, “complete coverages” of works
by Gerhard Richter and Warhol, as well as foundational characters of
the Latin-American modernism that include Lygia Clark, Jesus Soto, Helio
obras de Gerhard Richter e de Warhol, bem como de figuras fundamentais do modernismo latino-americano, como Lygia Clark, Jesus Soto, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Pape e
Mira Schendel. Nesse contexto específico, a estrutura de grade branca dos trabalhos
lembra alguns relevos de Pape da série Grupo Frente (1954-56).
Oiticica, Lygia Pape and Mira Schendel. In this specific context, the white grid
structure for the works brings to mind a few reliefs of Pape’s “Grupo Frente”
series (1954-56).
O jogo que Maggi nos propõe é repleto de grandes ocultamentos e estratégicas
revelações. É preciso olhar com tempo. A recompensa pode recordar o aleph, de
Jorge Luis Borges, aquela pequena esfera brilhante em movimento pulsante que
encerra nela todo um universo. Contudo, trata-se de um jogo silencioso, delicado,
vagaroso. Nesse sentido, encontramos aqui um sutil viés político, ainda que mascarado pela beleza e pelo deslumbramento das obras. A desaceleração é antimoderna, antiprogressista, anticapitalista, antiurbana e antiglobalização. Como uma
espécie de Fausto contemporâneo, o artista parece nos dizer: “Pára, instante que
passa”. Seu pedido dificilmente será atendido, e é justamente por esse seu traço de
resistência que a arte se torna tão fundamental em nosso cotidiano.
The game that Maggi proposes is replete with great concealments and strategic revelations. The viewer must take the time for careful observation. The
reward may relate to Jorge Luiz Borges’ Aleph, the small, brilliant and pulsating sphere that contains the entire universe. However, this is a silent, delicate
and slow game. In this sense, here we have a subtle political vein, even if
masked by the beauty and dazzle of the works. The slowdown is anti-modern,
anti-progressive, anti-capitalist, anti-urban, and anti-globalization. Much like a
contemporary Faust, the artist seems to say “This passing instant may stop”,
but his wish will hardly come true. It is precisely this trace of resistance that
makes art so fundamental for our daily life.
Grid Ream 2012 -- recortes em papel e caixa de acrílico/cuts on paper and acrylic box -- 30,5 x 23 x 5 cm
Turner Tower
Complete coverage on Norman Foster 2014
recortes em papel e plexiglas/cuts on paper, plexibox
29,2 x 22,8 x 6,3 cm
Turner box (Complete coverage on Warhol) 2006
recortes em papel e plexiglass/cuts on paper and plexiglass -- 30 x 23 x 6 cm
Turner box (Complete coverage on Johns) 2006
recortes em papel e plexiglass/
cuts on paper and plexiglass
30 x 23 x 6 cm
Turner box (Complete coverage on Schendel) 2007
recortes em papel e plexiglass/cuts on paper and plexiglass -- 33 x 24,1 x 8,9 cm
vistas de exposições
exhibition views
global myopia (2015)
Uruguay Pavilion, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice
desinformação funcional: desenhos em português (2012)
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
optimismo radical (2011)
NC-Arte, Bogotá, Colombia
slow politics (2008)
Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
Global Myopia 2015
56th Venice Biennale, 2015
Uruguay Pavilion
The challenge was to conceive a project that could travel in
a carry-on suitcase and unfold on the walls like a .zip file, a
portable infinite able to expand slowly during months prior
to the inauguration. The diminutive papers are disseminated
or connected following the specific traffic rules and syntax
dictated by any accumulation of sediments. A paper skin with
no letters, or handwriting, free from messages, displayed
slowly, according to no previous plan, on the walls of the
Uruguayan pavilion. The colonies of paper sticker on the
walls enter in dialogue with a custom lighting track provided
by Erco. Myriads of high-definition shadows and infinitesimal
incandescent projections will aim to slow down the viewer.
The project divides the act of drawing in two stages. First, by
cutting an alphabet of 10,000 elements during the course of
2014 in New York, and second by using the precut elements
to write on the pavilion walls during the Spring of 2015. In
the same way, the project separates the two key elements of
drawing, pencil and paper, into two spaces—paper drawings
in the main space and an installation of pencils in the first
room.
Drawing Machine (nine possible starting points) are nine
pencils sent to penitence. The parallel black pencils pointing
against the wall are suspended in the air by the tension of
nine archery cords. With the instability of a seismograph,
the work attempts to document the options available at the
outset of a drawing.
In conclusion, the only subject of Global Myopia is drawing.
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da instalação/installation view Global Myopia (2015) -- 56th Venice Biennale
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, NC-Arte, Bogotá
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
vista da exposição/exhibition view, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
1957
born in montevideo
lives and works in new york and montevideo
selected solo exhibitions
2015
Global Myopia, 56th Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy
2014
Instalação, Sayago & Pardon, Tustin, USA
Los Galpones, Caracas, Venezuela
West vs East, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
White Specific, Sayago Pardon, Los Angeles, USA
2013
Fanfold, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, USA
2012
Figari Prize XVII, Museo Figari, Montevideo, Uruguay
Desinformação Funcional, - Desenhos em português, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil
No Idea, MoLAA, Long Beach, USA
La Menor Idea, Galería Cayón, Madrid, Spain
X - ACTO II, Gallerie Xippas, Paris, France
Lentissimo : Lehman Loeb Museum, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, USA
Sliding Road: Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
Turn left, Galerie Xippas, Paris, France
2011
Optimismo Radical, Fundación NC, Bogotá, Colombia
X_ACTO, Xippas arte contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay
From Huguenot to Microwave, Dorsky Museum, New Paltz, New York, USA
Chaos I & B / OSART Gallery, Milan, Italy
2009
America Ream, The Warehouse Gallery, New York, USA
Slow Scandal, Point of Contact Gallery, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA,
Cubic Drops, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, California, USA
2008
Hipo real, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil
Slow Politics, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, Texas, USA
2007
Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
by disappointment only, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
2006
Off / Fora, 29th Pontevedra Biennial, Pontevedra, Spain
Profiles: The Ted Turner Catalog (from CNN to DNA), Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2005
The Ted Turner Collection, Complete Coverage, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
El Papel Del Papel, Centro Colombo Americano, Bogota, Colombia
Hotbed e Altre Storie, Vitamin Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy
From DNA to CNN, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, USA
Video Box (with Ken Solomon), Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Montevideo, Uruguay
2004
Fifth Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju, Korea
2003
inCUBAdora, VIII Havana Biennial, Havana Cuba
Constructing & Demolishing, Cristinerose | Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
exPECTACLE, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Construcciones & Demoliciones, dibujos en español, Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Montevideo, Uruguay
2002
25th São paulo Biennial, São Paulo, Brazil
Hotbed Online, Sala Uno, Rome, Italy
PreColumbian & PostClintonian, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, USA
Micro Macro, DAN Galeria, São Paulo, Brazil
2001
Global Myopia, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, USA
BITniks, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2000
The Pencil Monologues, 123 Watts, New York, USA
Hardware vs, Software, Miller & Block Gallery, Boston, USA
micro, macro, mArco, Project Room, 123 Watts / ARCO, Madrid, Spain
1999
From Freezer to Microwave, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
1998
Techtonic, 123 Watts, New York, USA
selected group exhibitions
2014
Latina, Xippas Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland
2013
Drawing UP: Jonathan Callan, Marco Maggi, Jacob el Hanani, Ignacio Uriarte, Josée Bienvenu Gallery,
New York, USA
Undrawn Drawings, Gallerie Hussenot, Paris, France
New acquisitions, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA
Flow, just flow, Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Richmond, USA
MoCA’s permanent collection: selection of recent acquisitions, MoCA, Los Angeles, USA
2012
Optimismo Radical, NC-arte, Bogotá, Colombia
Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA
2011
Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador
Beyond the Chaos Between Intelligence and Beauty, Osart Gallery, Milan, Italy
2010
Works from the Daros LatinAmerica Collection, Fundacíon Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain
Colorado University Art Museum, Boulder, USA
In Transition: 2010 CIFO Grants & Commissions Program Exhibition, Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, USA
Optimismo Radical, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
XVII Bienal de Guatemala, Centro Cultural Metropolitano (CCM), Guatemala City, Guatemala
2009
Collecting History - Highlighting Recent Acquisitions, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,
USA
How Soon is Now: Contemporary Art from the Permanent Collection, De Pauw University, Indiana,
USA
TEOR / ética: 10th Anniversary, TEOR / ética, San José, Costa Rica
Paper Trail v.5 Intimate Gestures, Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, USA
WALL ROCKETS, Contemporary Artists and Ed Ruscha, curated by Lisa Dennison, Albright Knox
Gallery, Buffalo, New York, USA
White Noise, DePauw University, Indiana, USA
Cutters, Leubsdorf Gallery at Hunter College, New York and Hunterdon Museum of Art, Clinton,
New Jersey, USA
Under the Knife, Museum of Art and Design, New York, USA
Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphoses of Graphite, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, USA
2008
New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930-2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA
2007
Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite, Joel and Lila Hartnett Museum of Art,
University of Richmond, Richmond, USA
Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
ARCO, Project Room with Marti Cormand, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, Madrid, Spain
2006
Estrecho Dudoso, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica
Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
Gyroscope, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, USA
Art on Paper, Weatherspoon Museum, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
Art Rock, Rockefeller Center Plaza, New York, USA
Paper Trails, Howard House Contemporary Art, Seattle, USA
Skirting the Line: Conceptual Drawing, Peeler Art Center, DePauw University, Greencastle, USA
TEORetica, Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo, San José, Costa Rica
Table Top, Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
MOCA, Los Angeles, USA
2005
Drawing From the Modern 1975-2005, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Pages, iSpace, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, Chicago, USA
RISD Museum (with Ken Solomon), Providence, USA
Drawing: Six Perspectives, Amelie A, Wallace Gallery, Old Westbury, USA
Minimalist Art Now, The Elvehjem Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA
2004
Happy Days are Here Again, David Zwirner Gallery, New York, USA
Trienal Poligráfica de San Juan, San Juan, Puerto Rico
Drawing a Pulse, University of Michigan, School of Art and Design, Ann Arbor, USA
Newpapers, Cristinerose | Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
microwave, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, USA
Troy Story, Hosfelt Gallery, San Fransico, USA
Micro & Soft on Macintosh Apple (with Ken Solomon), Cristinerose | Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New
York, USA
Indivisible Cities, Bill Maynes Gallery, New York, USA
YesteryearNowadays, Hales Gallery, London, England
Residency, Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Civitella, Italy
The Microwave, Cristinerose | Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
Itinerancia do Mercosur, La Caixa, Brasília, Brazil
2001
Mercosur Biennial, Porto Alegre, Brazil
By Hand: Pattern, Precision & Repetition in Contemporary Drawing, University Art Museum, University
of California, Long Beach, USA
2000
From the inside out - landscapes reconsidered, San José Institute of Contemporary Art, San José, Costa
Rica
Meat Market Art Fair, 123 Watts, New York, USA
Mapping, Territory, Connections, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France
Extraordinary Reality, Columbus Museum, Columbus, USA
Prints 2000, Bard College for Curatorial Studies, Annandale on Hudson, New York, USA
Drawing on Tradition, Fuller Museum, Brockton, USA
Horror Vacuui, Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
Introducing..., Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, USA
1999
Microwave, one, 123 Watts, New York, USA
New Space / New Work, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Summer Voices, Miller & Block Gallery, Boston, USA
New Work: Drawing, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
selected bibliography
2010
ZAMUDIO, Raul, Marco Maggi, ARTNEXUS, 2009
HUNTER, Becky, Interview with Marco Maggi, WHITEHOT MAGAZINE, March, 2008
SMEE, Sebastian, Filling in the blanks, The Boston Globe, September 12
Uruguaio dá volume ao tempo em exposição, Folha de São Paulo, August 25
HIRSZMAN, Maria; A arte latino-americana em alta, O Estado de São paulo, August 23
PEDROSA, Adriano; Slow Politics, Exhibition catalogue, Nara Roesler Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil
MACADAM, Alfred; Marco Maggi, ARTnews, January, 2007
O’STEEN, Daniel; X-Acto Science, Art + Auction
TISCORNIA, Ana; Marco Maggi, To Be Looked at Closely, Arte al Dia International
YOSHPE, Sheila; A Slow Walk with artist Marco Maggi, Roll Magazine, 2006
BAKER, Kenneth; Artist Reveals Slivers of Information in S.F. Shows, San Francisco Chronicle, April 8,
2005
GONZALEZ, Julieta; San Juan Triennial: Latin America and the Carribean,
ArtNexus, Nº 56, Vol. 3
SCHWENDER, Martha; Marco Maggi, The Ted Tuner Collection, TimeOut New York,
Issue 500, April 28- May 4
The Ted Turner Collection: Report from the Battlefield (Paper on Uccello),
Cabinet, Issue 17
2003
Vision & Revision: Works on paper since 1960, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
A Fine Line: Artists Who Draw, Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, USA
Pages, Cristinerose | Josee Bienvenu Gallery, New York, USA
IV Biennial del Mercosur, Porto Alegre, Brazil
Paper, Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco, USA
2004
JANA, Reena; How It Was Done: Paper Cuts, Art on Paper, November / December
LEVIN, Kim; New papers, Village Voice, July 21-27
BAKER, Kenneth; Hosfelt Gallery show suggests we’re blinded by information,
San Francisco Chronicle, July 10
BAKER, Kenneth; ArtNews, April
WEYLAND, Jacko; American splendor, TimeOut New York, Issue 440, March 4-11
CHURCH, Amanda; “Pages” at Cristinerose / Josée Bienvenu Gallery,
Art on Paper, March-April
2002
Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Selection from the 25th Sao Paolo Biennial, Museum of Contemporary Art,
Santiago, Chile
2003
B.L., Arte: Marco Maggi En El CCE, Caras Caretas, May 9
BAKER, Kenneth; Look closely: It’s not what you think, ‘Warped’ works play
tricks with space, San Francisco Chronicle, September 20, page D10
BARLIANT, Claire; The Microwave, Art on Paper, January - February
BING, Alison; Raising Expectations, sfgate.com, September 18-24
LEVIN, Kim; Marco Maggi, Village Voice, May 20
MACADAM, Barbara A.; Marco Maggi, ARTnews, November
MACADAM, Barbara A.; Marco Maggi, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Fall
NICHOLS, Matthew Guy; Marco Maggi at Cristinerose / Josée Bienvenu, Art in America, December
PHILLIPS, PatriciA; Constructing and Demolishing: manual to settle sediments,
Art Journal, Vol. 62, Nº 3, Fall
Scott, Andrea, Marco Maggi, Time Out New York, May 15-22
SHOLIS, Brian; Pages, Artforum.com, December 18
TISCORINA, Ana; Marco Maggi, ArtNexus, September to November
Unending Beginnings: The Graphic Work of Marco Maggi, Southward Art: Latin
American Art Review, Year 4, Issue 8, February
WASSERMAN, Sara; Report from Italy: Roma Renovatio, Art in America, June
WAXMAN, Lori; Marco Maggi, ArtForum.com, April-June, 2002
CRESCI, Simona; Marco Maggi alla Salla 1, Time Out Roma, September
GONCALVES, Lisbeth Rebollo; Contemporary Art at the 3rd Mercosur Biennial,
ArtNexus, March
HIRSZMANN, Maria; Um susurro sobre a falta de sentido do mundo, O Estado
de São Paulo, July
2002
JOHNSON, Ken; The Microwave, The New York Times, October 4
MACHADO, Alvaro; Marco Maggi, faz arte a curta distancia, Folha de São Paulo, July 20
Marco Maggi; Veja São paulo, July 31
PEDROSA, Adriano; Marco Maggi, São paulo Critic’s Pick, ArtForum.com, August
SCROTH, Mary; Dalle Bienale Di São paulo alla Salla Uno, La Stampa, September
2001
AMARANTE, Leonor; Ecos Globais, Bravo!, São Paulo, March
CANIGLIA, Julie; Marco Maggi, 123 Watts, Artforum, March
MACADAM, Barbara A.; The Micro Wave, Art News, April
SCOTT, Andrea K.; Marco Maggi, The New Yorker, January 29
2000
A.C., Las Diez Mejores Galeries dela Feria, ABC Cultural, February 12
BAKER, Kenneth; Contemporary Works at Hosfelt, San Francisco Chronicle, August 7
E.A., Lo Ultimo de EE UU, El País, February 12
MCQUAID, Cate; Landscapes plumb the divine; drawings trace the intricate, The Boston Globe,
May 25
1999
PORGES, Maria; Marco Maggi, Hosfelt Gallery, ArtForum, December
1998
LEVIN, Kim; Short List, Village Voice, December 15
Other Publications
100 Latin American Artists, EXIT Publishers, Madrid, Spain, 2006
Vitamin D, New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon Press, New York, NY, 2005
Gwangju Biennial, catalog, text by Marco Maggi, 2004
Havana Biennial, catalog, text by Ana Tiscornia, 2003
IV Mercosur Biennial, catalog, text by Gabriel Peluffo, 2003
Construcciones & Demoliciones, essay by Robert Hobbs, Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Montevideo, Uruguay, 2003
Weintraub, Linda, Being Gently Subversive, In The Making: Creative Options for Contemporary
Art, d.a.p.
Sao Paolo Biennial, catalog, text by Marco Maggi, 2002
III Mercosur Biennial, catalog, text by Angel Kalemberg, 2001
By Hand: pattern precision and repetition in contemporary drawing, University Art Museum, text
by Marie-Kay Lombino, College of the Arts, California state University, Long Beach, 2001
Marco Maggi: Global Myopia, text by Dana Self, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas
City, MO, 2001
The Pencil Monologues, introduction by Josée Bienvenu, 123 Watts, New York, 2000
Drawing on Tradition, texts by Denise Markonish, Fuller Museum of Art, Brockton, USA; San Francisco,
USA 1999
Microwave, one, introduction by Josée Bienvenu, text by Marco Maggi, 123 Watts, New York,
Techtonic, essay by Linda Weintraub, 123 watts, New York, 1998
private and public collections
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA
Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, USA
The Judith Rothschild Foundation, New York, USA
Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, Indianapolis, USA
Syracuse University, New York, USA
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, USA
Progressive Corporation, Mayfield Village, USA
San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, USA
Starwood Urban, Washington, USA
The Sprint Corporation, Overland Park, USA
American Express, New York, USA
Dacra, Miami, USA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA
The Drawing Center, New York, USA
Cisneros Collection, New York, USA
Morgan Library, New York, USA
Walker Arts Center, Minneapolis, USA
MoCA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, USA
Daros Foundation, Zürich, Switzerland
Diane and Bruce Halle Collection, Scottsdale, USA
21c Museum Hotel, Louisville, USA
The Rachofsky House, Dallas, USA
El Museo del Barrio, New York, USA
MoLAA, Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, USA
CIFO, Miami, USA
Loeb & Lehman Art Center, Vassar College, New York, USA
Dorsky Museum, New Paltz University, New York, USA
Marco Maggi é representado pela Galeria Nara Roesler
Marco Maggi is represented by Galeria Nara Roesler
www.nararoesler.com.br