Kay Rosen

 

Kay Rosen plays with the construction of words and phrases, manipulating their format, and placement to create context that generates new meanings.  Rosen’s later work relies more on these attributes but “Oh, Eua,”, one of her earlier works is a short narrative whose context emerges simply from punctuation change.  That gesture creates significant differences made between the two texts, speaking to the complexity of language.

-how meaning (of language) changes based on slight factors, like variations of tone.

-how every thing can be two things at once.  Or is it every thing can be many things at once?

 

 “Nothing Will Be As Before”

link to a post called 'artists holding signs'

Christopher Wool

Christopher Wool's text pieces are minimal, monochromatics, and for the large part words stenciled on aluminum. The sharp contrast of the dark text and light background lead the veiwer into reading the pieces as if they are a warning or declaration of truth, despite the absurdity of text itself. The text is found and it many times applied in a manner that forces the viewer to read the piece several times before the proper wording of the phrase is established (awkward spacing between letters is usually Wool's prefered method). Additionally, I find a subtle, and usually dark, humor in the phrases themselves, which only adds to the pieces.

-Aaron Smith

Bruce Nauman

Run From Fear, Fun From Rear (1972) is a neon text piece by artist Bruce Nauman. Run From Fear expresses the manipulative quality in language and communication which Nauman is fascinated by and I am most interested in. The popularity of the piece grew most during the aids epidemic in the early 80's. I once heard an interesting fact about Nauman's neon pieces – I guess his neon works are never sold(?)...and after all of his shows, the neon pieces are all destroyed(?). Crazy.

Slemmons, Rod, “Between Language and Perception,” Exit, No. 16-2004, pp.48-49, 132.

here is a link to the full essay i mentioned in class...the one page excerpt was distributed in class today.

enjoy!

new works by greg stimac / this sat 4-7pm -highly recommended!

Text-Art Pick

I have always had an extreme dislike of text-art, but this guy makes it sexy. I appreciate the hand built lighting setups to display his text choices, and the obvious care he has taken in photographing the completed installation. His work is the first I've seen that makes me interested in experimenting with text-art.

Nathan Coley - http://www.doggerfisher.com/artists/artistdetail.php?id=47