Indepth Arts News:
"GREG LYNN and FABIAN MARCACCIO"
1999-06-28 until 1999-08-08
Secession
Vienna, ,
AT Austria
. The joint project by Greg Lynn and Fabian Marcaccio can be seen as a combination of architecture and the
visual arts. Their collaboration can be compared to that of Richard Meier and Donald Judd whose works
created an ideal space by merging sculpture and architecture. The architect Greg Lynn and the painter
Fabian Marcaccio developed a different way of occupying space by coalescing different areas such as
iconography and topography in an urban setting. The project at the Secession comprises all of these
territories, facilitating a complex social and interdisciplinary exchange between these realms
Greg Lynn, born 1964 in Vermilion, Ohio, is one of the architects who are generating a new architecture by
means of the computer. This is based on Lynns view of a dynamic environment whose very different forces
have a potential impact on a building. Whereas in traditional architecture the primacy given to the factor of
gravity results in verticality and statics, Lynns constructions derive their form from a synthesis of the complex
directional forces at work. Crucial for Lynns concept is the integration of temporality and motion in the
architectural process of creating form. To this end, he feeds the computer with topographical, urban planning
related, thermic, etc. data of a specific site and lets it compute the flow movement of all these factors on the
basis of parameters. In a process of animation the computer generates amorphous spatial bodies whose
strong deformation is a visible result of spatial and temporal factors.
Greg Lynn developed the project at the Secession primarily on the basis of the architectural givens of the
building. Proceeding from the dome - the most conspicuous sign of the building which is symbolic of the
Secession movement - the architect developed a flowing, amorphous structure without corners and edges. A
construction consisting of aluminum poles extends from the dome over the facade into the entrance hall and
then into the exhibition room of the Secession. With this both dynamically moving and mathematically precise
form, Lynn refers to the complex architectural contrast between the organic structure of the dome and the rigid
geometry of the Secession building. At the same time the construction oscillates and mediates between three
art genres. On the exterior, it appears to be an architectural intervention, whereas on the inside it assumes
sculptural qualities and also serves as a supporting element for Fabian Marcaccios painting.
Fabian Marcaccio, born 1963 in Rosario de Santa Fe, Argentina, clearly addresses the formal issues of
classical modern painting and American abstract expressionism before dealing with the legacy of modernism
in a critical and personal way. Instead of concentrating on a specific painterly problem in his paintings, he
refers to a number of painting-immanent issues of avantgarde art by citing them. He gives this mixture of
references to art history an ironic twist by emblematically isolating the quotations used and overdrawing them.
This is visible, for instance, in the basic means of design employed by abstract expressionism: e.g.,
brushstroke, grid, stripe. Notwithstanding all the irony and detached-playful approach to the tradition of
modernism, ultimately it is the basic questions of painting that interest Marcaccio - questions he seeks to
solve in a contemporary way. Thus the relationship of figure and ground is just as much a theme in his work as
the potential object character of painting resulting from the fact that it is inseparably linked with the picture
surface. In his most recent works, Marcaccio has used the surface of the painting as a point of departure,
experimenting with a spatial type of painting. His abstract compositions on canvas that are hung on nylon
strings gradually broke with their two-dimensionality and developed into the surrounding space as sculptural
formations.
The exhibition at the Secession represents a radical continuation of these concerns. The aluminum poles in
Greg Lynns spatial construction are clad with Marcaccios paintings which extend throughout the whole
exhibition space. Together, the two artists have developed a concept that results in a synthesis of
architectural, sculptural and painterly qualities in a specific spatial setting.
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