(Bronx/New York City 1940–2017 Manhattan New York City)
Untitled (Maquette from Birth of the Car / Birth of the Boat), 1988, mixed media on cardboard in perspex box (3 parts), 46 x 60 x 40 cm each

Provenance:
A. A. M./Coop, Architettura Arte Moderna Rome
Private Collection, Italy
Sotheby’s London sale L14023, 1 July 2014, lot 158

Exhibited:
Rome, Galleria Il Ponte and A. A. M Architettura, Vito Acconci Maquettes and Drawings, 1988

Vito Acconci
The piece is designed for the edge of a promenade in the park: the piece looks out, it throws something out into the river, while at the same time it comes back inland, it brings something back home.
On the ground, at the edge of the pavement and parallel to that edge, is a concrete car without wheels, like a car put out to pasture: the hood and the trunk are open, shrubbery grows wild out of the hood and the trunk, the car becomes overgrown and turns into a jungle. Rising out of this car, at a 45° angle, directed out over the river, a second concrete car emerges like a rearing horse: the hood of this car is open, too, water pours out of the hood and off into the river, the car becomes a fountain. Out of the other side, the shore side, of the grounded car, a concrete sailboat emerges at a 90° angle, parallel to the ground: fog oozes out of its aluminium mast and boom, the boat comes onto shore like a ghost ship.
The concrete unit of vehicles functions like ordinary park furniture: it’s something like a statute, a monument – it’s something like a fountain- it’s something like seating (you can sit back on the edge of the hood and the trunk, the way you might sit on any car in the street, though in this case you’re sitting in the middle of shrubbery- you can always climb up, then, and sit in the sailboat, you disappear into the fog).
Vito Acconci, 1988