Celebrated in the most important museums worldwide, Vito Acconci is one of the most important expressions of “creativity in the field.” His latest works focus on the creation of multidirectional public spaces designed to lead users into an intense interaction with the places. His projects stem out of a careful conceptual consideration of the space-time relations about what is marginal, mimetic or striking, digital or analogical.
Acconci’s
debut took place in the flowing literary world, in the form of verses and short stories. The shift to material concreteness took place in subsequent steps, led by his growing curiosity towards the exterior, not only direct involvement, but also, towards the generation of different degrees of interactions between the surrounding environment and others. Starting with his attention of the body (private space), his strength and theatricality (embodied in his performances), Acconci gradually focused on a body interacting with the “other one” surrounding it, one such as built up spaces, shelters, portable architectures etc., spaces which are both private and public, as is evident in the numerous installations created in the 70’s and 80’s, along with the accompaniment of videos and music. His more recent activity officially started in 1988, with the establishment of the Acconci Firm specializing in urban design (buildings, parks, squares and furnishings). Thus, Acconci found the most natural setting for his work as an artist - his numerous public works are increasingly in the limelight and his spaces leave nobody indifferent nor do they go unobserved.
Unlike many contemporary realizations, where public space is mute, soulless, marked by both the green theme and the pure game of furnishings, a far cry from what people feel and experience both within themselves, Acconci and his firm create life spaces – spaces to be experienced in complete freedom, to be owned; spaces which do not close off thought and open new meanings. This is the reason why projects such as the manmade island connecting the two banks of the Mur river (recently built in Graz) or the Performing Arts Center in Memphis or the project (under construction) of a new park in Vienna are so effective.
«I want people to stumble in something– states Acconci - rather than going to a place where things are presented only to be looked at. I am greatly interested in the random bystander in the city, who stops in front of something because it coincides with his own personal life rather than because this something is defined as art.».
In this sense, his work revives the public sense of many spaces within the contemporary city which are increasingly overwhelmed by the speed of events, by an extra urban development, generic and not planned, which is devoted to the progressive reduction of the socialization processes.
Biography
Vito Acconci, artist and architect, was born in the Bronx in New York, in 1940. His origins are linked to Italy. His father (originally from L’Aquila) gave him a good Italian music education (from Verdi to Puccini) and passed him on his love for Dante. His greatest ambition for many years was to become a writer. In fact, he studied literature and poetry, graduated in Literature at the Holy Cross College of Worcester (Massachusetts) and in 1964 he obtained his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Iowa.
By the end of the 60’s, after working as a poet and a teacher, he became interested in visual arts and started working in photography, cinema, video, sound and performances.
In 1988 he established the Acconci Firm, dedicated to the architectural, furnishing and urban space projects.
Vito Acconci has won several awards and his works have been exhibited worldwide, in such places as the MoMa of New York, the George Pompidou Center in Paris, the Biennale di Venezia ,Documenta 5, 6 and 7 and Kassel.
He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The OBSERVATORY ON ARCHITECURE is an initiative of the TARGETTI FOUNDATION organized by Pino Brugellis and promoted in order to explore the most innovative trends of contemporary architecture, while analyzing its interrelations with art, sociology, town planning, psychology and the new technologies.
Since 2004 Peter Eisenman, Norman Foster, Dennis Frenchman, Yona Friedman, Greg Lynn, Thom Mayne e Bernard Tshumi were guests of the Observatory.
