Castello di Rivoli, Torino
June 8 – September 26 2010
Poetry, performance, photography, film, video, installation, architecture: in a career that has spanned more than four decades, Vito Acconci has experimented with different languages, techniques and methods, establishing himself as one of the pioneers of the most advanced forms of artistic research.
Vito Acconci “Film=Landscape, Video=Close-Up” presents a new selection of some of the artist’s most important film and video works created between 1969 and 1977. Using his own body as the raw material with which he works, Acconci tests its possibilities and limitations as a physical, sexual and vulnerable entity, but one that is also manipulable, transformable and resistant. Film and video play a crucial role during this phase of his work. For Acconci, one medium fuels the other, according to a principle of interaction between and definition of these different realms.
The title of the exhibition refers to a parallelism that the artist delineates in his writings. Acconci establishes a similitude between film and landscape and the relationship of the latter with dream, myth and the history of culture. Since it relates to a dimension larger than the person, Acconci’s film work has no sound, although it can possibly convey the human voice, which becomes like background music. In contrast, video is the medium through which Acconci establishes a direct relationship with viewers, in a sort of face-to-face confrontation, within which the close-up view creates distortions and where sound becomes a necessary element in the context of the “intimate distance” that is thus established between image and viewer. The installation consequently presents the films as large projections on the wall and the videos as transmissions on a monitor.
Drawing attention to a crucial phase in Acconci’s career, the exhibition presents works that continue to have an influence on contemporary research. Although Acconci’s films and videos have become a part of the legacy of art history, it is precisely because they are conceived as a “way into oneself” and then a “way into others,” that they have maintained their ability to attract, seduce but also confront and disturb viewers. Marcella Beccaria
Images, from above:
1-3. Soap & Eyes (Sapone e occhi), June 1970, Super 8mm, color, 3 min. Courtesy the artist
4. Three Adaptation Studies (Blindfold Catching) (Tre studi di adattamento – Agguantare alla cieca), summer 1970, Super 8mm film on video, b&w, silent, 3 min.
5. Three Adaptation Studies (Hand & Mouth) (Tre studi di adattamento – Mano e bocca), summer 1970, Super 8mm film on video, b&w, silent, 3 min.
