La Jolla ’96, 1996

red concrete 210x900x30 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, California

“For La Jolla he proposed a triangular form – which characterized his previous installation on the same site – but, in a sense, regularizing it and slightly changing its position, revolving it ninety degrees on its axis, turning it into a sharp arrow pointing at the ocean and maintaining its extension towards infinity. In this case, too, this was a form that Staccioli was to realize again in Europe in 1996 – for example, at the Museo di Arte Contemporanea in Bolzano. The arrow represents the theme of aggressiveness of the points, recurrent in his works of the 1970s with a signification of socio-existential tension, but Staccioli has reconfigured it in a more fluent manner, turning it into the “sign” that captures the gaze and focuses it onto the most out standing element of the setting – in this case, the presence of the ocean and the broad horizon extending over it.”

Francesca Pola, Mauro Staccioli in California, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles 2002, p.82