THE Magazine - Los Angeles

Carlo Marcucci's exhibition, excerpted from his Wheatfields series, offered an overview of his sculpture from the last decade, providing a good perspective on his ongoing body of work and revealing an interesting new direction. Working with dried pasta (primarily spaghetti) that he painstakingly glues in precise configurations to the surfaces of variously shaped boxes, Marcucci elevates these humble materials into a surprisingly elegant space. Though he employs other media as well -- including such things as staples and mechanical pencil refills -- the organic materials are the most engaging. Colors in the sculptures derive from the pasta itself, by turns subtle and stark. Scaled for intimacy, the modest size of most of Marcucci's objects invites scrutiny, rewarding such investigation with occasional sensuous passages of cracking and surface variance. Almost all the pieces Marcucci showed are rectilinear in form and pattern; the incessant rows of spaghetti strands create a visual insistence that lightens the somewhat stolid presence of some pieces. It's an effective approach, for the few exceptions seem discordant, rogue notes in the middle of a forcefully logical serial-music score. The most recent work Marcucci showed, from last year, heads into some intriguing graphic territory, placing pasta over text and logo excerpts from the packaging. In pieces such as Wheatbox 5: BAR(ILLA) PEN(NE), the spaghetti functions like a translucent lenticular screen, seemingly magnifying the text beneath the grain. Although Marcucci's stated intent is to reframe awareness of industrially-produced food through a role reversal between food and package, his work is elegant enough on its own merits without freighting it under such polemical purpose.