Archives – Summer 2010

Penwald 2: 8 Circles

A Performance by Tony Orrico

Performance artist Tony Orrico presented his latest work, Penwald 2: 8 Circles in the Atrium of the Keck Center on May 20, 2010. Lying face down on a large canvas, Orrico used his body as a drafting tool to create a large-scale graphite drawing.

The performance makes reference to da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and the idea of the body as a machine by which the drawing is created. Orrico inscribed eight large circles, each a revisualization of the geometric form known as an epicycloid. Orrico’s choice of gestures for each of the eight circles pays homage to Hildreth Meiere’s portrayal of the eight sciences on the ceiling of the National Academy of Sciences’ Great Hall.

Orrico has performed with the Trisha Brown Dance Company and Shen Wei Dance Arts. Recently Orrico has been working with performance artist Marina Abramovic at the Museum of Modern Art in a retrospective of her career. (Photograph by Michael Hart.)