A duet with Vito Acconci

A wet, rust-stained fabric frame hangs from the ceiling. A collapsed concrete platform lies on the ground. A steel frame wrapped in plastic is suspended over a plane of shattered security glass. A grid of steel bar, bolted to a structural beam, droops under its own weight. A fluorescent fixture. A slab. A cracked piece of glass. A steel plate… and so it goes. Applying poetics to these materials to marry the strong and the soft, this is the sculptural vocabulary which OSCAR TUAZON has become known for, and which comprises his latest installation, My Flesh to your Bare Bones. Maccarone is proud to present the gallery’s second solo exhibition with the American-born, Paris-based artist.

This presentation was born in response to ‘Antarctica of the Mind,’ by Vito Acconci. An unrealized proposal for the Halley II Research Station, ‘Antarctica of the Mind’ is bare bones architecture, a building that exists only as a description, only in the mind. An audio recording of Acconci reading the text plays throughout the exhibition. “Imagine this world as a white sheet of paper,” says Acconci. Tuazon attempts to inhabit this terrain, constructing a physical space for its existence—one that can be deemed cold, empty, cathartic. The walls are bare. The environment is lit by the fluorescent lamps of the works themselves, resulting in a space that feels overwhelmingly consumed by darkness. Tuazon’s works, restricted to the ceiling and floor, flesh out the bare bones of the building, evoking a structure in fragments, struggling against the elements.

Tuazon has composed his own written score that plays simultaneously with Acconci’s; the two voices echo and overlay, reverberating a duet within the gallery walls. The perplexing and chilling opacity of the mise en scène induces a temper of survival and vitality, evidenced most clearly when the artist’s voice explains his experiment: I feel a chill and then I move it. I kick at it and slip on it. I scratch a line out and spit on it. I spent a night out there, I spent some time out there. I went out there and spent a night out there, I don’t know where. The light died out while I walked and so I stopped. I just stopped there wherever it was, not that it mattered, spat, sat on the ground and sat down. I cut a hole in the ground and got in there. That doesn’t make it any place. I scrape at it, make some space in it, scrape and chip on it, carve a hollow in it, I get in it and sit in it. I want to put something inside my body and carry something in it. I want to get inside my body and get carried in it, I’d like to get buried in it, put my head in it and get in it, I’m not scared of it. I’m walking as I write this.

Oscar Tuazon (b 1975) currently lives and works in Paris. Recent solo exhibitions include: Künsthalle Bern (2010); Künstlerhaus Stuttgart (2010); Standard Gallery Oslo (2009); David Roberts Foundation,London (2009); Maccarone (2008); Seattle Art Museum (2008); and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2007). Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include: Art Basel Public Project; Dynasty, Palais de Tokyo and Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (upcoming); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Vigo (Marco), Vigo (2009); Kunsthalle St Gallen, St Gallen (2008); Contemporary Art Museum St Louis; Sculpture Center, New York (2008); Kadist Foundation, Paris; and Documenta 12, Kassel.