Publications

Words as Images

"He held the pages between his fingers for a long time?and there was something about the shape of the letters and the uneven spacing of the lines that disturbed him, like an irregularity of dress." -Flaubert

If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is a word as a picture worth? This catalog, while definitely not resolving this issue, will at the least entertain you in the interim. From Dada through Surrealism, Fluxus, Pop Art and Conceptual Art, a great many artists have become increasingly interested in the word not just as a sign, but as an image as well. The artists featured in this exhibition build upon these historical art movements in their investigation into the visual potential of words. The works represented, most of which were created specifically for this publication, involve many relationships of words and images, from text as a concrete visual object to the visual potential of descriptive language and the slippage that occurs in the complex interactions between indirectly related images and words. Artists in the exhibition: Terry Allen, Arakawa, Dotty Attie, Steven Beyer, Carole Caroompas, Agnes Denes, Vernon Fisher, Rosemary Mayer, Jim Melchert, George Miller, Auste Peciura, Lucio Pozzi, Ed Ruscha, Alexis Smith, Michelle Stuart, and William T. Wiley.

Published in conjunction with WhiteWalls.