Private Parts [PDF version]

"Private Parts" was the 1993 exhibition of Ron Rocco's artwork shown in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The project was a product of his residency in Rotterdam at the facilities of Kunst & Complex. Arising from the artist's experiences in the former Yugoslavia in the 1970's, and in the context of the civil war taking place in 1993, "Private Parts" focused on self-examination. However, in this case self is not defined as being limited to the individual. This body of art works delineated personal issues such as age, masculinity, and health, but was also to be understood with a more global meaning, in this context addressing questions of human frailty, genocide and social values in times of transition and crisis. In this body of works, he often referred to elements of control and order, and to environments bordering on social cataclysm, with images of sinking ships, deserted streets and disoriented swimmers. In addition, in combed through the library in Rotterdam he included images from Alchemy, or from medieval texts, that were used to illustrate elements of the photo-etched works. For the artist this project functioned as a diary of thoughts and images recorded during a year of painful transformation in Europe. Thus the work posted warnings of all that was at stake in the search for peace and unification in Europe. In essence this project was his attempt to put together some sense of how thin the line is between civilized and uncivilized behavior, between sanity and insanity. In discussing "Private Parts" he wrote, "In my effort to come to terms with the reality I witnessed during this time I would often consult the "I Ching". The readings I received spoke about darkness, danger and obstructions. This Book of Changes alluded to the fact that in such conditions even the good was compromised, as corroborated later by the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 when 400 Dutch UN peacekeepers were helpless to intervene during the killing of over 8000 Bosnian men and boys. The commentary I obtained from the "I Ching" during that period was assembled into the catalog."