Internationally Acclaimed Artist/Architect to Lecture at the University

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Internationally acclaimed artist and architect Vito Acconci will lecture at the University of Arkansas at 6 p.m. on Monday, April 19, in Giffels Auditorium. Acconci’s visit to the University of Arkansas was rescheduled from early March to April 18 —— 20 due to illness. Co-sponsored by the School of Architecture and the Department of Art, the lecture is untitled but may draw on any aspect of Acconci's complex array of work, which ranges from intensely personal body art pieces to large-scale urban remodeling plans.

Acconci began his career as a writer, primarily a poet, but in the late '60s he broke from the private realm of the page, developing performance art pieces that took place in the street, gallery and other public spaces. Acconci pushed the boundaries between public and private in works such as "Claim" (1971), where he barricaded himself into a narrow space and defended it violently, and in "Following Piece" (1969), where the artist randomly followed strangers on the street. Acconci also experimented with body work in pieces such as "Trademarks" (1970), when he applied printer's ink to bite marks he'd made on his body and transferred the impressions to other surfaces. Acconci later moved into video, sculpture, furniture and interactive architectural installations — structures activated by viewers, often using swings, bicycles or carts attached to pulley systems. In recent years, Acconci has worked in collaboration with Acconci Studio, based in New York City, to develop a wide variety of public projects, from bus shelters and transit lounges to parks, plazas and urban plans.

Acconci views art as a process: "I think of art as having a kind of instrumental use . . . So when I say 'make art,' I don't mean a kind of self-enclosed art, but I mean art as this kind of instrument in the world."

From 1968 to 1971 Acconci taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, and he has participated in numerous visiting artist programs at institutions such as Cooper Union, New York, Yale University, New Haven, and Parsons School of Design, New York. Acconci has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Sonnabend Galley, New York (1971), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1978), Kunstmuseum, Lucerne (1978), Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (1981), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1983), and the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1988), among many others. The lecture is free and open to the public. For more information on Acconci, please visit www.acconci.com.