Alexander Viscio
The interplay between words and visually perceptible object configurations is a recurring theme in Alexander Viscio’s conceptual art. His constructions assume diverse forms throughout his oeuvre, initially connecting closely with the body, then evolving into installations that transcend the body and become objects, ultimately transforming words into spatial elements.
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In the 1980s Alexander Viscio studied Fine Arts in Multi-Media and Critical Theory with John Baldessari at CalArts (California Institute of the Arts) in Valencia, California,. Over several years he teached 3D-Design at Jersey State College in New Jersey.
By generating new meaning(s) from literary conventions Alexander Viscio’s work examines the means by which one sets out to explore and challenge the boundaries both implicit and overt that are sustained in the language we use and the structures we build to order, protect, define and give meaning to our Lives. For over 4 decades what remains insistent in Viscio’s work is the phenomenon of encounter when the viewer/guest surreptitiously find’s themselves directly in the path of the framework developing around them, influencing the ebb and flow of their peripheral and the content that ensues.
Whether it is with large scale public sculpture or sculpture specifically designed to encapsulate his body to be used as vehicles for other landscapes (VAL), Viscio engages the notion of time having pleats and the potential of immersion in a fabric-fold of Time. His work derives from the reflective constraints of form, submersion and subversion. As the collective is held hostage by the passage of time, Alexander Viscio holds himself and the public hostage within the work through language constructs that become form. In a crimped moment, the action of restraint becomes paramount in his operations.
Besides his artistic work he regurarly curated contemporary art exhibitions – he writes a column online at www.thenewyorkoptimist.com, where he portrays international young artists.
Artist Statement:
Drawing from sources such as the human body, organic materials and found detritus, the work recalls processes of decomposition, decay and transformation. Their meanings however go beyond this natural order of violence and destruction to a level of intellectual dispatch that is sustained in the language we use to order, define and make sense of our lives. This is apparent by using glass to present materials in conflict and unison and presenting them as medical slides. In this manner the alchemic processes of crystallization and decomposition of form is evident, creating a transformative dynamic and exposing the performative properties in the objects.
Since 1981 the work has incorporated my own active presence in challenging the public’s awareness and relationship to space and the space they share with my work. For the most part, the sculptures are designed in association with my body size and weight where-by I am inside these sculptures operating as the mechanism that make the sculpture move in erratic behaviour, becoming vehicles for another landscape or VAL.
By exploiting the malleability of language, literary conventions and American colloquialisms are manipulated in order to consider them not only as objects themselves that can contain ulterior content in physical form but architectural structures that contain the viewer(s) as content as well.
Alexander Viscio
