Estimations

Transitioning from his work as a poet to visual art, from 1969 to 1970, Vito Acconci created a series of over 20 works combining photography and text that would, in his own words, “get myself off the page and into real space. These photographic pieces were ways to, literally, throw myself into my environment.” In both urban and natural landscapes, Acconci used a set of self-imposed instructions that described how to perform and document specific kinds of activities. In Estimations, his instructions and the results are listed along with the photographs. Here the artist explored the deceptive differences between reality, appearance, and representation. Acconci assembled this work in its present format 17 years after he captured the images.