We live in an age of texting and twittering and over saturation with logos, slogans, and billboards. So it is only natural that both emerging and established artists are grappling with layered meaning in language and texts. Gagosian Gallery’s Lauren McCaffrey and Allyson Spellacy are co-curating a groundbreaking group exhibition of over 25 artists’ language-inspired, narrative-based texts (and their erasure), constructing a dialogue that reflects the inherent anxiety in our social networking obsessed times.
The co-curators described their vision for the show in their own words:
In the words of a Los Angeles Country Club: Exclusive yet not exclusionary, this exhibition of over 25 artists endeavors to be neither. A range of artists – from commercial to amateur, emerging to established – have been invited to submit a variety of language-based texts (and in some cases their attendant erasure). The resulting installation hopes to bring together several disconnected, yet seemingly interrelated issues and ideas, and present them through a cluttered and disruptive lens, leaving options open, lines blurred and questions unanswered.
Taking as a departure point Bruce Nauman’s lithograph “Vision” – a repeated word by nature of its edition, explaining the conundrum of the “visual language” situation, Tommy McCaffrey zooms in on messages scratched into school furniture or found in swimming pools. George Stoll’s text ottoman is the one piece that literally bridges the contemporary showroom and object d’art (courtesy of Lightbox Gallery) while Pacific Dissent Company (an underground collaboration between Charlie White and Noel Howard) refuses to bridge anything that denotes “high” art and commercialism, preferring grafitti and fashion and fuck yous. Casey Ruble from New York shows her “Directions to MoMA in Braille” an untouchable acrylic on paper framed behind glass, as Jason Polan scrawls on torn pieces of magazine, naïve yet genuine inquiries like: “Do you like me better with my eyes closed?”, as well as the title of our show “I’m so excited to be talking to you!” We hope you will be too…
The exhibition runs through May 16, 2009 at Denizon Design Gallery, 8600 Venice Boulevard, Culver City