Tony Orrico: CARBON set from Tony Orrico on Vimeo.
Artist Tony Orrico will bring his movement-based art to the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, first through a 30-hour performance spanning four days beginning September 11 and the next through an intensive two-day performance art workshop called Being to Begin on Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September 29.Orrico's best known for his Penwald Drawings: charcoal artifacts created through performative motion. They're composed bilaterally, with both hands and both feet acting at once. Like a printing press he moves through or across the surface of a plane, ticking graphite sticks or swishing them around in the palms of his hands -- a movement that creates a sound like a stationary rowing machine. He pivots slowly with his wing span doing the work of a massive spirograph, layering lines through repetition.
His project at the MAC, Wane, falls into his new series CARBON. In it Tony abandons symmetry as a starting point and instead rips apart drywall, uses the pressure of his body to set motion to pencils, sews the debris of his deconstructions into new sculptures and finally, gets naked. It's a life cycle creation where one action's energy bleeds into the next; art is visible in both the shape of doing and the output of what's been done.
A project of this scale is a big deal for the MAC. In fact, it represents the first sponsored exhibition coordinated by its young adult member's program The MAC PAC, which has raised the needed funds for Orrico's performance. To help bring the weekend workshop to life, a Kickstarter was made. (It's running now, so go ahead and toss some coin in.)
If you'd like to do a weekend study with Tony Orrico registration opens today. Pop into the MAC and register; the two-day workshop costs $20 for students and $80 for adults and runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day.
