The most vividly accidental arrangement of artless objects that I've come across in recent times was in a half built house in Florida. The unfinished fixtures, the loose wiring, the litter of paint pots and the ditch cleared for a pool, all suggested a mood of labour and do-it-yourself potential that was very close to the interests of a lot of contemporary art.
Joseph Giannasio's interventions in an older building summon a similar impression, but by heading in reverse - pulling up floorboards, resurrecting trash. By apparently drilling holes in the struts below the floor, he forms spirals of wood chips that feel still fresh and pulpy despite they age. Light pours in to illuminate wet grime and damp surfaces - all of them alive in some fashion. The Paint Rolls in Gordian Knot suggest that the process of resurrection might proceed in different ways: by laying down new surfaces, like a roll of fresh turf, or by shaving old ones off. And, meanwhile, Bottle makes a Surreal object out of the discards, returning us to the moment of the bottle's birth, when a liquid mass was blown out to give it shape.
While Robert Matta-Clark's building cuts often emphasised the thin, provisional nature of the structures with live in, Giannasio's 'architectural earthwork' points instead to their solidity and reliability. He reveals the almost Minimalist regularity of the forms that underpin structures that look a great deal older than the 1960s. And, he highlights the filth we live among quite happily every day - so long as it's brushed into corners and out of sight. What's left when we pull back the carpet, he says, is not ugliness but, instead, new surfaces of great beauty. And when these are cleaned up and sanded down, the line between the new and old is rather hard to draw.
Morgan Falconer
To see more of Joseph Giannasio's work on Saatchi Online click here.
Morgan Falconer is a journalist and critic. After an age spent immersed in 1920s New York as a graduate student, the result now props up his computer, and today he writes about contemporary art and culture for a variety of publications including Art Review and Modern Painters.
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