FLLAC plays host to contemporary artist’s modern work

As Vassar College eagerly anticipates jazz bands, dance performances, musical workshops and other artistic festivities this ModFest season, artist Marco Maggi asks that we take it slow.

In this 10-year anniversary celebration of contemporary arts, Maggi brings us Lentissimo (which, appropriately, means ‘slow' in Italian). His new exhibition, located in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (FLLAC) until April 1, features 14 new imaginative works made from simple materials—found objects—that can easily be found laying around your house.

Maggi has transformed these common materials, such as reams of aluminum foil or old, discarded pairs of reading glasses, into abstract or even superficially mundane pieces of art. Unconventional in style and presentation, some of his featured artwork defies easy description and categorization in traditional fine art terms like "canvas painting."

For example, he has one installation that consists of multiple blocks of copy paper stacked on the floor and arranged to span it. Amid his other unordinary work, Maggi carves geometric patterns into Plexiglass and mirrors. The scale of his featured artwork ranges from the minute and miniature to a 48-inch mirror. His range of materials and size, and implementation, is quite unique in itself.

It is quickly apparent that Maggi likes to feel his way through his materials, taking his time with their creation. He dissects everything, turns it inside-out, and slowly crafts his works without concern for speed in its production.

"The quality of his work seems to contradict a lot of notions of art," said Linda Weintraub, a critic, author and artist acting as the keynote lecturer for the opening reception. "We like speed, but the process of his work is slow," Weintraub continued. "He is proposing a very different tempo in his work than is known. He is requiring us to change the way we think about art."

Maggi noted his subversive style is completely deliberate. "In order to do my work, you have to work slow. It is intimate and has a way of bringing you close," said Maggi. "When you see it, you don't know if you're looking at a large scale monument or a city, you lose your own perception of scale." His work often has such an architectural aesthetic, with some pieces appearing like blueprints and schematics, for example.

"I love architecture. Right now I'm doing a series of famous buildings. I think that the middle ground between two and three dimensions is my place to work," Maggi explained. "I really like the relationship between drawing and actually making something."

In her two-part lecture, Weintraub's goal was to first enumerate five different notions and habits in contemporary art culture to which Maggi presents a subversive alternative, such as Maggi opting to create his work slowly, with a deliberate inattention to speed. In the second half, Weintraub will display various images that have been compared to Maggi's artwork.

Weintraub, in fact, once taught Maggi as an art student at State University of New York at New Paltz. Maggi started creating art at a very young age and stopped for nearly 20 years before rediscovering his love for art as an adult. "I was very fond of him then, and saw loads of potential," Weintraub said. "I am not surprised that his career has taken off so successfully."

For this exhibit, Maggi teamed up with FLLAC Curator Mary-Kay Lombino to bring his artistic visions to the public. "Marco likes to do some of his own arranging. I made sure that he could come in the beginning to set those works," Lombino said. "Everything is created for the space, and so we knew which works would be in the gallery."

Lombino first became fascinated by Maggi's work in 2001 when she organized a group exhibition that included some of his pieces. She described his work back then as being very precise, abstract, and sometimes repetitive in his drawing.

"I've been following Marco's work ever since ... his work has changed a lot but my interest in him has grown because he has just gotten better," Lombino said.