A Slow Walk with Marco Maggi

A conversation with Sheila Yoshpe

Marco Maggi was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. He has represented his country in biennials in San Pablo, Korea, Havana, and in Mercosur. In the last year, his work was exhibited in MoMA in NYC, the Hirshshorn Museum in Washington, D.C. and MoCA in Los Angeles.

In 1998, he received an MFA from SUNY New Paltz, the town where he draws twelve hours a day, seven days a week. He interrupts his work to sleep, walk on Huguenot Street, and eat as little as possible.

We did this interview in two sessions: eating at P&G’s and walking along the Wallkill River.

Why New Paltz?

Since 1998, I have had the opportunity to visit many cities. For an artist to travel so much, it becomes an illness similar to that which happens to professional athletes that tour. Visiting as many airports as shows, you have the opportunity to choose the perfect place to live and work. When I finished my Master’s degree in New Paltz, I was certain New Paltz was the best place in the world to draw in a serene and subversive manner.

In New Paltz, the deer cross the streets and the students dance until four in the morning. Thousands of young people transmit energy and balance out a landscape that without them would be excessively bucolic: orchards, pumpkins, and golf courses. Add t that being able to buy specific materials locally, by Internet, and in Manhattan. Manhattan at an ideal distance, in one and a half hours one goes from unplugged reality to a spectacular shock of stimuli and possibilities.

How would you define your work?

I am a slow artist who does tiny things and insignificant signs. Understanding less is my profession. Understanding less and less each day demands rigorous training. Not understanding is basic and very healthy. When we do not understand, we doubt, we feel insecure. We reduce the speed of our decisions. We expand our attention, and we are subtle and very cautious. When we have no doubt, when we are accompanied by faith and its certainties, we become a danger to the public, capable of making urgent an radical decisions. In art and in cars, speed is tragic.

Drawing demands complying with one road sign only: STOP.

I construct precise confusion for it to be viewed without the least expectation of being informed. It is micro confusion that attempts to stimulate our fragile love of the insignificant: texts or textures? We are familiar with the DNA structure, but we cannot remember the genome’s alphabet. We are not capable of reading a hair despite knowing it has sufficient information to clone our best friend.

I have only one question for you. Is the inability to relate to this type of information blindness or should it be described as a new form of illiteracy?

In both cases, the most advisable thing to do is to patiently resign ourselves to the fact that we are doomed to knowing more and understanding less-victims of semiotic indigestion. Every day we watch the news on CNN without noticing the difference between a live transmission and death. The extreme percussion of news prevents any repercussion of the news. An overdose of drama is the perfect anesthetic, a tool for censorship that is more efficient than a pair of scissors.

We are setting up a society of dysfunctional information: reality becomes illegible and the visual arts become invisible. My drawings resemble writing in a language I cannot read.

What is your upcoming show in Chelsea about?

It’s a six-month dialogue between a Steadler pencil and an X-acto knife. These two tools were working without hurry or pause on materials as diverse as they are mundane. Reynold’s Aluminum foil from ShopRite, Macintosh apples from the Wallkill View Farm, aluminum rulers from Manny’s, plexi from New Paltz Glass, paper reams from PDQ,Clayboard from Ampersand [Texas], graphite sheets from China, and Yupo paper from Japan.

The show will be a concept traveling slowly on several surfaces.

Why the title: By Disappointment Only?

It refers to the sign that hangs in some select galleries…by appointment only. I am so disconcerted with what is happening in the world and I feel that not one of us would have made an appointment to visit our planet at this moment. We are witnesses to the first global disappointment.

We all feel out of place at the start of the 21st century. The French feel like strangers in France. The Americans feel like strangers in the United States, and the Uruguayans feel like strangers in France, the United States and in Uruguay. The hope is that is available is unambitious and slow. The only plan for viable reconstruction is to treat anyone or anything near you with respect. Put your attention at a short distance and plot humble exercises to promote delicacy. For example, I’m drawing the skin on an apple instead of eating it. Changing the destiny of a roll of aluminum foil permits its access to a museum collection.

A conversation with Sheila Yoshpe

A selection of Marco Maggi’s work will be part of From A Drawing Standpoint, an exhibition at the Leo Fortuna Gallery, 422 1⁄2 Warren St., Hudson, through 10/29. By Disappointment Only is the title of Marco Maggi’s upcoming exhibition in Manhattan [his fifth solo show in New York] on November 8, at Josee Bienvenu Gallery.