John Maggiotto
Biography
John Maggiotto is an American artist, born into a large family from Buffalo, New York. At the age of eleven his father taught him the basics of photographic development. In college, Mr. Maggiotto's interest in photography followed a fine art approach. He chose the then recently introduced Polaroid SX-70 camera as his sole instrument of production. His instructors dismissed his choice as "not serious." His work was exclusively about television, and the painterly color palette of the Polaroid format. Mr. Maggiotto was part of the collective of artists who formed the alternative space Hallwalls in the late seventies. Here his work was recognized and included in the 1979 Albright-Knox Art Gallery exhibition In Western New York, curated by Linda Cathcart and Charlotta Kotik. In 1980 he moved to Washington, DC to work at the National Endowment for the Arts.

Abandoning the traditional paper based photograph, Mr. Maggiotto began to print his work on large plates of plaster, a true departure from the precious, intimate realm of the SX-70's three inch square. As in the earlier work he takes the imagery from television. An on-going exploration into the memory of mediated experience, the imagery follows heroes, thieves, women in need…the gamut of lives not lived but watched. This productive time was capped by his first one-person show at Laurence Miller Gallery in Soho. Living near one of New York's premiere marble yards led to this current body of work. Marble is a metamorphic rock, natural forces change it from its original form to its present state. Mr. Maggiotto changes the meaning of images he finds in one context, and recombines them into another. The work has presently progressed to a series of prints based on marble works. Choosing iconography from our collective memory of television and movie images he underscores the great American themes of heroism, honor, strength and perseverance.


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