Marianne Vitale (b. 1973) Marianne Vitale creates inventive work that spans sci-fi installations, domineering videos, and sculptural tributes to Americana gone kaput—all approached with total commitment and blistering attitude. Drawing from a heritage of Minimalist and Monumental sculptors, Vitale excavates American debris such as railroad infrastructure, burned bridges, and torn down outhouses. In these pieces, Vitale uses the reclaimed wood from these now-disused structures to build architectural sculptures—from barns to grave markers to entire building façades—that she bruises, dents, cuts, or destroys. Her ability to bludgeon utilitarian material into works of extraordinary heft—in both their weight and vigor—retells their becoming and their invention. Such manipulation creates a link between past and present, continually recalling the dark undertones of westward expansion and traditional notions of America.

Vitale burns, breaks, bruises, and builds anew, forcing us to interrogate our own histories through the objects we abandon in the name of progress. In her breakout video work Patron (2009), exhibited at the Whitney Biennial in New York City in 2010, Vitale spits military-style poetic commands at the audience, addressing the room as “patrons!” and demanding we open our mouths to be force-fed our medicine – a call to arms against “Neutralism” and complacency.

In recent years, the artist has been carving out a bold new direction in her work, tapping into the anxieties surrounding America's frontier history with sculptural pieces that invoke the deep hunger for autonomy and freedom such undiscovered territory affords.