Kay Rosen Sp-spit it Out, from the Ed Paintings, 1988.
Enamel sign paint on canvas. 30 x 22 inches.
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Language has accounted for the image, the subject and the
source of my work for a long time. An academic background in
comparative linguistics, applied linguistics, and Spanish
and French provided a rigorous method and discipline for
scrutinizing the smallest mechanisms by which language
operates and for dissecting and analyzing almost invisible
components of language. But academia did not furnish a
sympathetic framework or audience for investigating and
presenting alternative ideas about language which came from
digging around in it and excavating unorthodox and
previously unnoticed sub-systems which operate independently
of authorized rules. Because many of the incidental and
unintentional linguistic 'events' which interested me were
most effectively revealed and understood through seeing and
reading, rather than through speaking and hearing, it became
useful for my purposes to present information visually:
through painting, drawing or the visual page. Grammar and
the visual strategies of typography and layout are critical
to interpretation, but improper academic issues. They can
contribute significantly to the way that information is
received and processed, as can such formal properties of art
as color, surface, composition and scale. These visual
concerns may not have much to do with linguistic structure,
but they are capable of structuring and affecting meaning.
They function as much like signs and directives for reading
and interpretation as do phonemes. Because my interests did
not comply with all of the requirements and expectations of
a formal academic linguistic system, my work found a way to
combine the paradigm of the classroom and the research lab
with that of the studio through short concise verbal
constructions which were painted, drawn, and printed and
which drew their inspiration from a vast number of cultural,
personal and historical sources, including language itself.
In the abbreviated micro space of the art work, language
hopes to exceed and outperform its normal representational
function and its obligation to be processed through the
intentional and subjective consciousness of an
author/speaker. Through the deployment of strategies which
have as much to do with design, advertising, fine art, and
stand-up comedy, as with linguistics, language is capable of
doing very surprising things which it didn't know it could
do.
Kay Rosen is an artist who was born in Corpus Christi,
Texas, and who lives most of the time in Gary, Indiana. She
teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and
exhibits nationally and internationally.
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