Nancy Dwyer
Larry Johnson
Kay Rosen
Jack Pierson
Joseph Kosuth
____________
Nancy Dwyer
‘Dwyer’s use of words as images, which took over her work exclusively by the summer of 1985, has prompted many observers to draw analogies between her and other contemporary artists who use words in their work. But this is somewhat beside the point. Words have been part of a visual vocabulary from earliest times, and though the focus on words as images is relatively new, it seems limiting and reductive to deal with this phenomenon as a homogeneous idiom. For Dwyer in particular, the use of language derives from her interests in its colloquial quality, and in ways of reinventing it in order to produce an expressive and personal kind of “reporting.” Dwyer sees language as a living thing, intrinsic to specific times and places. And when she states, “We’re to the point where words are a new version of pictures,”2 she’s referring to the way in which words are commonly altered pictorially, through computer graphics, to create dramatic, three-dimensional titles for films and television. Dwyer then characterizes her own labor-intensive, non mechanical working method (she draws the letters by hand, photographs and projects them, and takes Polaroids of these projections from various angles in order to render them three-dimensional) as ”making originals of something that there never was an original for.“ These images are highly charged and dramatic, yet are so deeply imbedded in everyday life that they are scarcely noticeable. Television has inured us to a varied diet of constant drama—the news, films, commercials, ”true-life“ and fictional narratives, and the drama of presentation itself. Dwyer uses the drama of the sales pitch in her work to try to ”make poetry out of selling by forgetting that there’s something to sell.”‘
____________
Larry Johnson
‘Larry Johnson has influenced an entire generation of artists who use photography not to ‘capture’ images but to make pictures that reveal the underlying social strata of contemporary culture. His work represents an idiosyncratic amalgam of popular history, text-based narrative, graphic design, and class awareness; even as it maps the physical and mental geographies of Los Angeles, it establishes a broader critique of the ways in which culture defines itself. Johnson often looks to the production of cartoon illustration, for instance, as a way of channeling the repressed libidinal energies of Hollywood. He hijacks pre-existing cultural forms and bends—or queers—them according to his own ends, appropriating signs and symbols through a kind of camp-inflected haunting, all the while locating vulnerability and humor in some of the darkest recesses of the social landscape.’
____________
Kay Rosen
‘In an increasingly digital age, words and sentences are moving in the direction of shorthand through the use of brevity and abbreviation. Some linguists have predicted the demise of traditional punctuation and spelling before the middle of the century because of the quickly evolving nature of text messaging. It is of no small consequence that for much of our personal communication we are giving up voice for text, and much texting is taking on graphic, visual attributes through the use of acronyms and emoticons. In this brave new world, Rosen’s work gains an added significance because of its emphasis on visuality and content in equal measure. The artist’s works are part of the continuum that includes the early Renaissance animism of Geofroy Tory, the Modernist sensibility of the Bauhaus, the formal structure found in Post-Modern choreographers such as Trisha Brown, and the abridged, often humorous nature of text messaging. As with the truism that sometimes one plus one doesn’t equal two, a work like Rosen’s Two Times Four proves that language, when looked at in a certain light, can be greater than the sum of its parts.’
____________
Jack Pierson
‘Jack Pierson employs photography, collage, sculptural assemblage and installation in pursuit of love, longing, kinship, poetry, celebration, youth, fantasy and identity. The artist’s mode of non-hierarchical cultural compilation and a process of impulse-led editing allows Pierson to create personal and universal narratives across his multidisciplinary practice. Emerging from the 1980s milieu of the Boston School of documentarian photographers, Pierson was instead drawn into a world of gendered, punk-influenced performativity, and was greatly influenced by the more tactile work of his friend, Mark Morrisroe.’
______________
Joseph Kosuth
‘Joseph Kosuth is one of the pioneers of installation art and conceptual art, a movement which emerged during the 1960s and 1970s and redefined the notion of the art object. Kosuth was among the first artists to employ appropriation strategies, language-based works, photography, installations and public media. He also wrote some of the earliest theoretical texts supporting these approaches. Throughout his career, Kosuth has continually explored the production and role of language and meaning in art.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! I haven’t read it yet because it’s still in the post to me, but she’s very good. You must be excited about tomorrow. I recommend hitting the little amusement park Prater if you have nothing to do for an afternoon or evening. Yes, let’s gather an arsenal and pretend the Putin voodoo doll is some kind of violent board game. It would not even be possible to be less interested in that ‘Barbie’ movie than I am. Since Zac and I start editing our film today, all I request from love at the moment is to wish us luck, G. ** Tea, Hi. I’m awaiting my copy too. And the Thomas Moore as well. It’s true, Disneyland can get irksomely crowded. It was built for hugely less people at a time back in the 50s, and it has become a very tight squeeze sadly. Troy Baker, don’t know him. I’ll look him up and try to avoid his actual music while I do, ha ha, thanks. ** Lawrence Patti, Hello there! Thanks a lot for coming in. Philip at AS keeps promising to do an AS event here in Paris, but, so far, … alas. How are you? What’s up? ** A, I don’t roll my eyes, I just smile and nod and try to switch subjects. Oh, so Zac and I need to organise the whole King Kong thing? Might be tough. Well, can you tell Derek that if he really does want to interview us to write to me so we can set that up? I don’t know any Paris photographers who do that kind of thing, but I’ll see if Zac does. ** Misanthrope, Well, that will make it easier somehow. I like voices that curdle concrete. Give me that over Adele, et. al. any old day. Did you have the anticipated fun or I guess are you continuing to? I like the Mario Party games too. I hope your kidney has gone back to ghosting you. ** Sypha, Ange is also one of the stars of Zac’s and my new film in addition to his fine poetry. ** Charalampos, Anybody who’s made happy by a GbV song is a pal of mine. The rest of the album is that good. My favorite songs on ‘Propellor’ are ‘On the Tundra’, ‘Exit Flagger’, ’14 Cheerleader Coldfront’, ‘Lethargy’, and ‘Weed King’. Mm, no, I don’t think that exact thing has ever happened to me. Interesting. Is there no good bio of Kenneth Anger? How very strange indeed. ** Bill, Hi. Thanks. Well, Oursler pieces tend to blur together, at least in my head. Whit Monday? Is that what it is? What in the world does that mean? I’m just hoping the tabacs are open today, otherwise I’m cooked. ** Nick., Hi. Um, I looked at a bunch of art and ate macarons and drank a lot of coffee and made a bunch of blog posts because I start editing the film today and will have much less time to do that for a while. I think your day wins. That affirmation sounds cool and more than sorta sweet to me. Ah, ha, Charli XCX is the pick. Gotcha. Makes sense. And your A+ on ‘Face Eraser’ has done my heart a lot of good. How did you organise your Monday? ** David Ehrenstein, I personally didn’t forget it. ** Mark, Oh, I quite liked that Jessica Yu film. I even like the animations, and usually the animated bits in docs drive me crazy. Cool that a friend of yours produced it. Kudos to her. Little Caesar #10. I think that was a pretty good issue. Lita Hornick was so funny. I never could figure out if she intended to be. 826LA sounds like a great thing. I’ve never heard if it. What is it exactly? Lovely that you volunteer there. That’s supremely admirable. Awesome! Thank you! ** Steve Erickson, Ha ha. I think the only Dead album I ever bought was ‘Aoxomoxoa’ when I was a teen. I saw the Grateful live twice, first in the ‘Live/Dead’ era when they were still a psychedelic blues band, and I quite liked them, and the second time some years later once they’d become what they became and I was very bored and left very early. Re: the editing, I’ll know better once we start today, but, if it’s like with our earlier films, we’ll edit from morning ’til evening every weekday and maybe on Saturdays. This weekend you could feel summer coming in the weather here, and I didn’t like that one little bit. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Sorry and not surprised about Leeds. Hugs. On our side, PSG just won the Ligue 1 title for the billionth or something time and Messi broke Ronaldo’s all time scoring record. Maybe move to Paris? ** Minet, Hi! My weekend was alright, not bad. Saw art, friends, worked, Zoomed, wrote. Eek, about the food poisoning. I’ve been a vegetarian since I was 15 and have never had food poisoning, I think for that reason? Glad you righted yourself in time for LDR. Flowers strangely help everything. I wonder why that is. That you loved the GbV song makes me very happy, them being my gods and all. Uh, I haven’t been listening to a lot. I’m going to see Sparks soon, and I got their new album, and it’s wonderful. I need to go on a downloading spree. You recommend anything? ** Jamie, Hey, J! My weekend was fine: see above. I tried to chill mostly because I’ll be swamped with film editing for the upcoming portion of forever starting today. Cool about the Luther Price shebang. Yeah, they’re better projected, for sure, and opportunities are few and far between. The Gaitskill story is called ‘This Is Pleasure’. Not hugely recommended. I’m trying to figure out if today would be ideal if it was a kindly stick of dynamite, and I think it would be. Dunce cap cornucopia love, Dennis. ** Jack, Hi, Jack! I will scour about and try to find/see ‘Darkness, Darkness Burning Bright’. Thanks so much! That Prismatic Ground Festival sounds pretty enviable. There’s a thought of doing a book of Zac’s and my three (so far) screenplays, but nothing concrete yet. I like the idea. A great book that takes place in the woods … huh. Mm, I think Max Frisch’s ‘The Man in the Holocene’ takes place mostly in the woods? I’ll have to think. How are you? What’s going on other than your festival attendance? ** Right. I decided to curate a little show about words in my galerie, and there you go. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 