December 12 – 23, 2007
Curated by noted Canadian cultural critic, journalist and poet, Gary Michael Dault. The use of words as a core for the creation of works of visual art can now claim a century of history, and arguably occupies centre stage in current cultural discourse via an organic relationship to the World Wide Web, and the algorithms of digital programming. As part of Propeller’s Curated Exhibitions Series, [Text] presents works of art that are made of words: the word as tool, as structural unit, as expressive dynamo.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
As part of Propeller’s “Curated Exhibition” series, the 2007 show will be will have noted Canadian cultural critic, journalist, and poet Gary Michael Dault as curator
The use of words as a core for the creation of works of visual art can now claim a century of history, and arguably occupies centre stage in current cultural discourse via an organic relationship to the World Wide Web, and the algorithms of digital programming. From Constructivism and dada, to fluxus, conceptualism and net.art, not to mention the agitprop of global marketing and its culture-jamming adversaries, works of art produced at the cutting edge have fixed upon the Word: as text, structure, constraint, syntactical word-play, object, or meme. It is a fixation as various as the uses of language itself, and is marked by the intrinsic democracy of words. The products of this activity range from the narrative to the analytical to pure poetry, which is both and neither.
Ludwig Wittgenstein said “The limits of my language are the limits of my world,” and linguistic theory has suggested that the Mind and Language are one. We use language as a bridge and as a bomb; words are ciphers, gestures and commodities. Their power is their flexibility: they can illuminate or disguise, enrich or debase.
Propeller Center for the Visual Arts is seeking works of art that are made of words: the word as tool, as structural unit, as expressive dynamo.
