MOLAA’S INAUGURAL LIVE ART AUCTION

LOT #15MARCO MAGGI (Uruguay, b. 1957)Growing Square (Subtractive Color) /Cuadrado en crecimiento (Síntesis sustractiva de color), 2012Cuts on 55, 35mm color papers in 55 slide stacks30 x 30 in. (76.2 x 76.2 cm)Gift of Sylvia Meyer, New YorkEstimated price: $15,000-$20,000Marco Maggi is best known for his use of common materials such as Plexiglas, Reynolds aluminum foil,Macintosh apples, diapositive slides, and paper or cardboard in standard formats. Maggi inscribes on theseobjects and materials micro-landscapes of saturation, with the intention of inviting people to stop andcontemplate detail, as we are constantly flooded with information that we have ceased to understand. Heoften resorts to word play in his work and titles due to his interest in language and signs that allow differentconclusions and meanings.Growing Square (Subtractive Color), 2012, is a work comprised of ten columns by ten rows of stacks of 12slides; each row has one stack less every time, therefore the first row has ten slides, the following nine, andso forth, until it ends with a row of a single stack, forming a total of 55 slides. This system of repetition andsubtraction not only creates a visual relationship with architecture and geometric shapes—giving theillusion that the piece is “increasing” or “decreasing” in the upper-left angle of an incomplete square—butalso plays with the idea or possibility of a system that is either growing or fading away, with either theinvisible saturation or removal of the “missing” stacks of slides. Growing Square also references thesubtractive color method utilized to produce Kodachrome slides.Maggi received his MFA from the State University of New York. Selected exhibitions include American Ream,Syracuse University, Palitz Gallery at Lubin House, New York, 2010; New Perspectives in Latin AmericanArt, 1930–2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions, MoMA, New York, 2008; By DisappointmentOnly, Josée Bienvenu Gallery, New York, 2007; Poetics of the Handmade, Museum of Contemporary Art, LosAngeles, 2007; and Hotbed e Altre Storie, Vitamin Arte Contemporanea, Torino, Italy, 2005. Maggi lives andworks in New York and Montevideo. 17