Pick-up lines
Joe Zuccarini
From across the room, he would catch her sneaking glances at him. Certain that she was checking him out, he playfully averted his eyes. Even with his back to her, he could feel her steely gaze, beckoning him closer. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end with anticipation, and with an air of confidence, he tossed back another round and proceeded to make the first move. Casually, he strode over to where she was standing.
This vision was running through my mind as I sat over a plate of nearly-finished calzones, listening to Joe Zuccarini liken the finesse required in approaching art with that used in approaching a woman. Before long, Zuccarini, local artist and president/CEO of Zhap!, a video production firm, was on to other concepts such as obsession, religion, schizophrenia and the Tao—all subjects that relate to his work. But his description of that initial, lustful encounter had me hung up.
“Approach [my art] like you would approach a woman,” he had begun, “full of questions and the desire to get to know that person, but all the while led by a visual seduction. I hope the viewer will feel some emotional involvement first, and then hopefully some intellectual involvement once the questions are asked.”
Zuccarini’s art is created from found objects, many of which he discovers at the junkyard. His initial desire to purchase a specific item, he hopes, reflects what might go through the audience’s mind upon first sight of his work: “What the hell is that?”
“The audience is not meant to be totally intellectual,” Zuccarini continued. “They are drawn to it, feel some sort of emotional response, and they think, ‘What’s going on here?’ “
At a reception for his most recent show, Saints and Schizophrenia, which has now ended, people milled about in a darkened room in the Bleulion art studio, roaming from piece to piece, introducing themselves to each one, like they would a potential mate. The installations were spatial, and seemed to beg the viewer to touch, caress, walk around and behind it, and even onto it.
Zuccarini doesn’t like being too specific about the impetus for any given work.
“You can’t step out and say, for example, ‘This is about my father.’ You don’t want to present this victim side, like a lot of artists do. You let the audience get what they want out of it.”
Zuccarini understands that a viewer may not go any deeper than the surface of his work, yet he acknowledges that each piece is layered with meaning.
“The work ties into mythology, my background as a Catholic, and as I get older, mortality, spirituality, decay—what you think about when you’re 50.”
It must be something visceral in the subconscious mind that initially draws a viewer in, Zuccarini said. The pieces are quite sexy, considering they’re composed of massive metal forms. Selection of the elements, composition and lighting, make them appear absolutely weightless. They’re remarkable to see in person.
One large piece resembled liquid-bronze stepping stones leading up to a giant, rusting bowl. Lighting in the room was low and you had to squint in order to identify the little details, like the origin of dripping water, falling from the dark space above, onto the rusting massive forms below. With much of the work’s decay actually taking place in the room, it is not surprising that the viewer would gaze, studying for long periods of time every jagged edge, smooth resin surface, green-colored glint, or still-collecting pool of water. Zuccarini’s work invites the slow, visual study of its body.
But unlike the visual summing up of a possible mate from across the bar, the experience of approaching Zuccarini’s works isn’t marred by inhibition.