Hotbed Line
Provocatively titled Hotbed Line, this full-room installation piece consists of 76 reams of white copy paper, extending in a line along the length of the gallery floor. Using an X-acto knife, the artist has cut a shape in the top sheet of each ream. The cuts are sometimes flat, sometimes folded up to protrude from the surface of the paper, sometimes mere slits, and sometimes openings of varying widths.
Marco equates his work to written language. Here, each sheet of paper is inscribed, through cutting and folding, with hieroglyphic shapes which the viewer reads as they proceed along the row of reams. Each ream is a self-contained sculpture, as well as an integral part of the entire assemblage. It is left to the viewer to tease out the obscure verbal/visual message of this large and simultaneously small sculpture, cunningly crafted and conceptually complex.
The assemblage is part of the sculpture collection and was exhibited in the Dorsky Museum exhibition, From Huguenot to Microwave: New and Recent Works by Marco Maggi, curated by Brian Wallace, February 12 – April 15, 2011.
Maggi divides his time between Montevideo, Uruguay, where he was born, and New Paltz, NY. He represented the U.S. in the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. He received his MFA at SUNY New Paltz.
