Frieze Art Fair has named Loring Randolph its new artistic director of the Americas. Randolph joins the fair after serving as a longtime partner at Casey Kaplan in New York. “I have participated for many years in Frieze Art Fairs as an exhibitor and my perspective in this regard offers some unique insights into my new role,” Randolph says. “Frieze is a progressive organization that is poised for growth, and I greatly look forward to working with my colleagues—the array of world-class galleries, curators, writers and collectors that partner with the Frieze fairs—to present an unparalleled experience at Frieze in the quality of gallery presentations by today’s most significant international artists.”
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Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci image via The Brooklyn Rail
b. 1940
Lives and works in:
Brooklyn, New York
Represented by:
Acconci Studio, Brooklyn, NY
Education includes:
College of the Holy Cross BA, Worcester, MA
University of Iowa MFA, Iowa City
Acconci, a New York born and based artist, began his career in the mid-60s as a poet and co-editor (with poet and author Bernadette Mayer) of the journal 0 to 9. The journal published works by important contemporaneous artists and writers such as Robert Barry, Dan Graham, Sol Lewitt, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Smithson.By the late 60s Acconci drifted from writing and, influenced by the readings he participated in, started exploring performance-based work, video, film, and photography. Much of this work was highly conceptual and focused on the artist’s body within space (Following, an early piece, consisted of the artist being led around New York City by strangers). Another prominent feature of this work was the element of total physicality as pronounced through his engagement with his own body, which at times was quite grotesque and bordered on violent. Perhaps his most notorious piece, Seedbed (1971), consisted of Acconci lying under a wooden ramp in Sonnabend Gallery, masturbating, while his concurrent fantasies were being broadcast through speakers in the gallery. This piece, which employed performance, language, and a direct relationship between the viewer and the artist, would establish the vein in which Acconci worked for years to come.
Crash by Vito Acconci, image via Wikipedia
By the 1980s, Acconci explored more proto-architectural constructions, moving out of the traditional gallery space into more open, dialogical, public space. In 1988 he formed Acconci Studio, an architecture and landscaping firm, with a group of other architects. Acconci Studio, based in Brooklyn, continues to design public buildings.
City of Words, Lithograph by Vito Acconci, image via Wikipedia
Books About Vito Acconci:
More info about the artist coming soon.
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