Ron Rocco

Rocco's earliest work in sculpture grew out of an interest in the tension generated forms, made famous by the American artist, Kenneth Snelson and German architect, Frei Otto. Mr. Rocco’s work was based on arced segments of aluminum or wood, in constructions which displayed a balance between tensile and compression forces, subject to the effects of gravity.

Building on earlier work at M.I.T.'s Visual Language Workshop and Owego, New York’s Experimental Television Center, Rocco authored computer software to produce an early image processing system for video. His works "Plotzensee" (2000) and "Berlin Diaries" (2000) can be found in the Experimental Television Center Repository, in the Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art. This resulted in his 1985 collaboration with dance choreographer Mel Wong and The Mel Wong Dance Company. Together they presented, Buddha Meets Einstein at the Great Wall during an American tour and at New York's Asia Society.

Other media projects in-residence at Canada’s Banff Center in Alberta, involved musician David Hykes, of The Harmonic Choir. Together they developed a computer assisted laser/video work, which generated kinetic cycles of visual phenomena from Mr. Hykes’s music. One such installation, provided real-time, graphic representation of sound, employing a laser scanner and a digitally processed, video feedback loop to create images that were abstract and strikingly calligraphic. This appeared in the work, In Light of Sound, one of Mr. Rocco’s Andro-Media Series installations, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. The New York State Council on the Arts funded event in collaboration Mr. Hykes and his Harmonic Choir used the two-thousand-year-old tradition of Mongolian overtone chanting, practiced by these musicians, to control the visual phenomena created by the system of scanning lasers, video displays and computer processor.

Focusing on the balance between the natural and man-made world, Mr. Rocco’s 1989, Waterline Project in Amsterdam, Netherlands was created for the Dutch foundation ArtGarden.

The Horizon is Nothing More than the Limit of Our Sight, Mr. Rocco’s 1990 installation for the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, in addressing the natural and man-made worlds used the horizon to define a perceptual boundary.

Other projects during Mr. Rocco’s later European residencies at Künstlerhaus Bethanien and Die KünstFabrik in Berlin, Germany as well as Kunst & Complex in Rotterdam, Netherlands, resulted in exhibitions in 1991-93. The Berlin Project, fruit of his work at Künstlerhaus Bethanien’s International Studio Program, was a body of art works which identified distinct facets of Berlin's evolving social dynamic. The objects showcased, referenced the socialist realism found in eastern parts of the city, as well as commercial elements taken from the west. The project, part of which is housed in Berlin’s Berlinische Galerie, utilized images taken from the streets and transit system of the city, as well as historical references, to reveal the new rules in an economic struggle beginning in the city at that time.

Structures of Detention, an edition of photo-silk screen prints on bound editions of The New York Law Journal, document a social dynamic between crime and punishment. Houses of Detention and Federal Buildings in New York City, provide the counterpoint to court proceedings and records outlined within each page’s text. In these artworks there is a dialog established between the pages and these buildings, which provide an opportunity for social commentary and dark humor.

To Mr. Rocco it was clear Beuys chose the classroom as his canvas in orchestrating an open forum for intellectual exchange and frequently applied “philosophical concepts to his pedagogical practice.” (Wikipedia-Beuys). Rocco began teaching in China, combining art concepts with other interests in guiding his students to further their future success. In 2014, Mr. Rocco met and began working with a local architect, Josh Wu, consulting on several projects Mr. Wu was engaged in. Since then, they have together completed several architectural projects in Zhuhai, which include the interior design of the G Flowers store in the city's Gongbei district, an exterior and interior redevelopment of a building for the Contemporary Music Institute in Beishan, and most notably the redesign of a 400 year old ancestral hall in the same Beishan village for the Chengchuan Art Gallery.

Works like A Poet Dies on 12th Street and Eviction Plan stem from his experiences as a tenant organizer at this time, and document cases of murder and arson as side-products of these economic forces.

In 2011, Rocco visited China for the first time. He explains the circumstances of his visit in this way, "In the 80's I worked extensively with dancer, choreographer Mel Wong and his dance company. During that time Mel invited me to visit him in Hong Kong, while he was an artist in residence in that city. Although fascinated by the prospect of visiting Hong Kong, at that time the visit was not possible. From that point on a deep regret at missing this opportunity began to develop. I promised myself I would not miss the next opportunity when one developed.

In 2011, such an invitation was offered and in keeping with my promise I came to Hong Kong. During that visit, on the suggestion of a friend, I took a ferry to Zhuhai, China. It is no exaggeration to say my interest in relocating to Zhuhai was like love at first sight."

The installation Shake Up! from his 2010 New York exhibition at Dam Stuhltrager Gallery, curated by Lynn del Sol is an artwork addressing issues of environmental degradation and the reality of Global Warming. It records the moment of shock; the rude awakening after a turning point. Shake Up! is the moment after the earth moves and we find ourselves in a hostile new environment. It also symbolizes the hoped for heed of the 'wake up call' to humanity.

Communicating Vessels, was presented as a maritime contribution to the Snug Harbor Cultural Center's program in 1998. As a site specific and web based project located at the St. George terminal of the Staten Island Ferry, this project joined maritime subjects, navigation technology and historical documents to explored the relationship of Snug Harbor Cultural Center's past, as a home for retired seamen, to the present refuge for aged sailors in Sea Level, North Carolina. Through interviews with the residents of the North Carolina facility, Communicating Vessels presented the Atlantic Ocean as the connective element between the two locations via the Internet, using an information kiosk at the St. George site to present the web site, track ferry navigation via software provided by MapTech corporation, and to distribute newspapers and other publications. Communicating Vessels, was funded by the Netherlands Consul to North America and CBK Centrum Bildende Kunst, Rotterdam.

Working in the later '90s, Mr. Rocco explored the potential of web based projects in works like Rabinal Achi/Zapatista Port Action of 1997, a collaboration with Ricardo Dominguez, for the M.I.T /List Center Gallery's exhibition PORT/Navigating Digital Culture, and Communicating Vessels with Dutch artist Arnold Schalks.

Private Parts, the product of his residency at Kunst & Complex in 1993, focused on self-examination, an examination defined as transcending the individual. This body of work, which delineated personal issues such as age, masculinity, and health, took on more global meaning, in the context of addressing questions of human frailty, genocide and social values during times of transition. In this body of work, Mr. Rocco often refers to elements of control and order, and environments bordering on social cataclysm, through images of sinking ships, deserted streets and disoriented swimmers.

At the time, Mr. Rocco clarified, "The formal concerns of movement in dance could accentuate the effects of my equipment on the flow of time, providing a suitable format for the beauty and complexity of this subtle video processor". This performance was funded by a 1984 Inter-Arts Grant from The National Endowment for the Arts and the Sony Corporation, and may well have been the first live, on-stage application of computer generated imagery for dance.

In the period of 1979-80, Mr. Rocco returned to New York City and it was during this time that he met and was influenced by the work of German artist, Joseph Beuys who was producing his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum at the time. As a result of this new influence later work in tension sculptures began to encompass performance activities, employed string figures taken from Inuit and Oceanic sources; forms, which in their traditional context possessed a social facet, in the communication of communal beliefs and ritual.

Resident in New York 1979-1989 on the Lower East Side and later in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Rocco’s sculptural work focused on New York Real Estate as a defining force in the life experiences of artists.

While residing in Ithaca, New York Rocco's work through a public commission from Festival Ithaca and the National Endowment for the Arts in 1977, resulted in Altair, a matrix of arc segments and stainless steel cable, occupying an area of 1,200 cubic feet (34 m), suspended five stories above the city center. Meketra a second large scale commission from this period was exhibited at Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.

In the late 1950s and '60s Rocco grew up in the Bronx in New York City. His was an ethnically Italian neighborhood, surrounding Arthur Avenue, known as the Little Italy of the Bronx. The neighborhood scrap metal yards, inspired an early interest in working with metals, and a sense of the latent potential of found materials to evoke memory and associations. Rocco went on to study the visual arts at Purchase College, State University of New York, with classmates Jon Kessler and Fred Wilson, studying with sculptor Tal Streeter, photographer and musician John Cohen and printmaker Antonio Frasconi. Later he began graduate study at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at M.I.T. under the instruction of the German Group Zero artist, Otto Piene, filmmaker Ricky Leacock, and anthropologist Heather Lechtman. Here Mr. Rocco began projects, which would result in his Guggenheim, New York performance entitled Zaroff’s Tale.