ARTIST STATEMENT
John Naccarato creates conceptually driven visceral works incorporating varied media, such as performance, media art and installations. He uses daily life as subject matter to create a critical commentary of communication technology’s intervention on social, cultural and personal identity. Naccarato’s work also tends to incorporate interactive game tactics, which reflect everyday life, where everyday objects undergo transubstantiation. This is evident in some of his earlier large scale site specific installations such as The x-Series (2010), Skinning of Memory (2011) and The Obscure Objects of Desire and the Rise of the Technological Chimera (2011).
Between 2011 and 2013, Naccarato began to explore the possibilities of public intervention by incorporating Augmented Reality (AR). AR allows virtual elements to be overlaid onto physical space. This technique was used with The Conversation (2013), which explored how certain archetypical gestures evolve through the everyday use of mobile technology. With The Spaces we AR (2013), AR was used to critique notions of private and public space/s such as the escalation of condo developments throughout Montreal's Sud Ouest area.
Naccarato latest works such as The Democracy of Objects Project, (2014 - ongoing), and The Existential Pause (2015 - in development), incorporates an anthropological, archeological and archival approach to explore our relationship to discarded objects: how these objects offer up certain ontological clues towards a non-hierarchical, and unbiased relationship between ourselves, our identity and our environment.
BIOGRAPHY
John Naccarato was born in Kirkland Lake, Canada in 1956. He received his BFA from Concordia University, Montreal (2008), followed by a MFA from the University of Ottawa, Canada in 2010. Mr. Naccarato’s artistic career has spanned over a forty year period, in which he has explored multiple media, such as film, painting, sculpture, installation, and new media. Over the past few years, Naccarato has begun to focus on communication technology: ways in which to critically interpret and critique its ubiquitous manifestation in our daily lives. Mr. Naccarato was recently a keynote speaker at the (Un)certain Boundaries: Visualizing the Intersections of Science & Society Symposium; CSTMS, University of California, Berkeley (2013), where he discussed current projects and concerns about new media and technology. Mr. Naccarato presently lives and works in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
