Imagination Becomes Reality Conclusion

Works in the Exhibition | Text



Fabian Marcaccio: Terminal Ground, 2004
Photo: courtesy Goetz Collection

Works in the Exhibition

Terminal Ground, 2004, single-channel video installation (color, sound), 1'
Janeila's - Paintant, 2002, ink, silicone, oil, acrylic on canvas



Text

For many years the New York-based Argentinian artist Fabian Marcaccio has been expanding traditional notions of painting. He experiments with all its classic constituents - stretcher, canvas, paint - in order to make painting and its conventions the focus of his artistic practice. His impasto sometimes reaches beyond the edge of the picture plane or his canvas may bulge like a sunshade and be attached to the side of the stretcher with rivets. In the latter case, the works could be placed on poles and set up on the beach. Marcaccio's motifs are often abstract or, in a way reminiscent of Pop Art, they take the brushstroke as their subject. In the 1990s the artist coined the term 'paintant' - a combination of 'painting' and 'mutant' - to describe his extensions of conventional painting and its components. Among his most intriguing works are the video Terminal Ground, 2004 and the painting Janeila’s Paintant, 2002. In the former his work took a fresh turn, uniting painting with the new medium of video. The video is shown on an upended flat screen so that the whole resembles a framed easel painting. The painting depicts the same motif as the video – naked female bodies resembling Art Nouveau nudes in style and appearing behind a web of oversized cords. Together, the two works offer viewers an especially compelling opportunity to think about the effect of different media on their perception of the same motif. Static in the painting, the women come alive in the video, where they are seen stretching themselves.

Text excerpt »Images are generated by a gaze searching for new and personal insights. They are images of those gazing at the world« (Author: Stephan Urbaschek), Exhibition Catalogue Imagination Becomes Reality Conclusion