Vito Acconci

BLOWN-UP BABY-DOLL

BLOWN-UP BABY DOLL (6 Triangle Version), 1993

A four color screenprint on 2 ft. equalateral triangles of Sintra and mirrored plexiglas. Available in two editions; 6 triangles to create a 4 ft. hexagon or variables (edition of 20, pictured above) and 24 triangles to create an 8 ft. hexagon or variables (edition of 10, pictured below).

BLOWN-UP BABY DOLL (24 Triangle Version), 1993

SOME NOTES ON BLOWN-UP BABY-DOLL
5/20/94, A face is blown up -- expanded, exploded -- to become architecture. More precisely: the image -- the flat image, the photographic image -- of a face is blown up to become a wall. The baby grows up to become bigger -- more than we ever accounted for. The 'normal' is analyzed, separated into parts; the parts are replicated, revolved, and enlarged; the 'normal' is repeated/reversed/de-placed, so that it becomes a 'monster.' or: the 'powerless' is repeated/reversed/de-placed, so that it becomes 'powerful'...the 'human' is repeated/reversed/de-placed. So that it becomes a 'thing'/ a 'fact'/ a 'god'... Or maybe it's simply that: the image of a human face is repeated/reversed/de-placed so that it becomes 'atmosphere' -- it becomes wall-pattern, a wall-hanging, like a rug for the wall.

The Naming Calling Chair

Name Calling Chair, 1990;

Cherry, ebony, and birch veneer plywood, Edition of 10, 48 x 38 x 48 inches

Notes on a Name Calling Chair, Vito Acconci Architecture or furniture, while it is being used (by a person in the role of participant), is also being read (by a person in the role of observer): having a function, on the one hand, furniture/architecture exists as a sign, on the other. A chair announces itself as a chair; otherwise, we wouldn’t know we could use it (we’d be left to our own devices, we’d have to re-invent something as a chair). It’s as if furniture has attached itself, a billboard, a sign, a set of directions, a code-system.

A person fits himself/herself into a chair, that person is fit into a role; Name Calling Chair ‘speaks,’ inscribes that role. Name Calling Chair gets down to the basics, basic A-B-C’s. (But maybe you don’t know your basic A-B-C-‘s; you’re an ass-hole; so we’ll start with ‘A’ and go on from there and call a spade a spade.)

Name Calling Chair is a kind of alphabet of building. Name Calling Chair equates basic building with basic language with basic insults. What you see is what you get; what you read is what gets you.

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