So much of the way we express ourselves is constricted by the formats that allow us to do it, by simple things like the space between the lines on paper, or by the limited symbols that make up whatever language we speak. Swanson’s art can feel a little detached at times, machine-made, processed, the opposite of beautiful. They provide touchstones that inspire us to seek out the profound implications of the basic things we don’t consider when it comes to language. Among this artist’s other choice of media: Sharpie markers, Wite-out and crayon boxes. “Eight-and-a-Half-by-Eleven” lives in an abstract place, but it is powered by real things. When parts of a page are highlighted what happens to the information that is ignored? Does it simply disappear forever? He basically removes everything except the fields of that offending yellow shade.
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That yellow ink in highlighter pens is actually a chemical derivation called Pyranine and Swanson uses it freely in a series of works on paper that recall the passages he highlighted in actual books he has read. But how do these images, often based on a middle-class view of the world, work for children who don’t live at that level of society, How do cultural biases impact learning?Īt the other end, he considers how we remember language.
For instance, looking at an apple, a banana, a cat, to master the sequence of letters. In one video piece, he explores the practice of learning the alphabet by looking at images. Swanson investigates language both at the front end and the back. In a sense, humans will all have the same handwriting in the near future, and that will impact everything from individualism to the social status that has always surrounded the quality of our penmanship. The piece, by default, brings up the fact that handwriting is on the way out, as children learn language digitally on keyboards rather than actually forming letters with a pencil or pen.
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But how much do the forced structures of writing influence that and how much is innate, free will? It forms our signatures, a legal recognition of who we are, as well as our personal style. There’s only a slight difference in the distance between lines on each side, but anyone who has ever had to switch up their hand-writing to accommodate that difference knows it has a great effect on the way we write, and our ability to convey the things we need to say.Īnd our handwriting is one of the most basic expressions of our identity. One side is standard rule, the other college rule. In one corner of the gallery, he papers over two connecting walls, floor-to-ceiling, with enlarged decals that look like blown-up versions of ruled paper. Instead, he reminds us of the voids we are expected to fill in with linguistic expression. Though there isn’t a single word on display. Indeed, this exhibit has more than two dozen objects, and all of them are about language. No doubt, Swanson is more interested in the structures of language than words themselves. The work gets at the physical quality of erasers, that we like to squeeze, fondle and play with them, but also at their function, by taking something that is formally meant to remove something and using it to do the opposite - to create something - though the function of the new object might be debatable. Like, for example,”How Many Pink Pearl Erasers Would it Take to Create a Perfect Cube?,” which is the name of a piece that borrows the sort of query found on a standardized test and then answers it with hundreds of fleshy, stubby, pink erasers stacked into an object that stands one-foot by one-foot by one-foot square. Rather than serving as commentary, though, it really attempts to raise questions. Those pieces set the tone for “Eight-and-a-Half-by-Eleven,” which often feels playful, though sometimes gets very serious. As an homage to the idea that the really interesting passages of a cereal box are on the back, he turns it around, reversing the letters so they read backwards.
He explores this in another piece, where he takes the logo off of a box of Trix, enlarges it and casts it in black, powder-coated aluminum, creating a two-dimensional wall sculpture. Like a lot of children, Swanson recalls that he eschewed books in his short attention-span years and learned to read mostly through the endless, repeated scanning of cereal boxes as he ate breakfast. So many of these conundrums come up when we are first introduced to language and this exhibit dwells heavily in a place few serious art shows dare to go: kid land, a place populated by five-year-olds and the things they love, like crayons, and “Sesame Street” and alphabet books.Īnd more cereal. Tuesday, August 1st 2023 Home Page Close Menu
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