The artworks featured in Art=Art=Text employ charts, graphs, and tables as structures for organizing both ideas and tangible things. In some cases, such as Christine Hiebert’s Brand Drawings (1998-1999), they reveal how humans organize the world around them. In others, such as Lawrence Weiner’s Polaris (1990), they show how extraordinarily relative our perception of the world is. And yet other works, like Alice Aycock’s Garden of Scripts (1986) adopt these devices for playful ends.
1. What can be considered a chart, graph, or table? How do the artists in this exhibition expand on traditional definitions of these tools?
2. Charts, graphs, and tables are modes of communication that are considered scientific and even objective, but many of the works in Art=Text=Art clearly reflect the subject positions and opinions of their creators. How do artists use these frameworks for persuasive ends, to change our perception of the ideas or objects within them?
Other relevant works include those by Carl Andre, Jill Baroff, Suzanne Bocanegra, Annabel Daou, Nancy Haynes, Mark Lombardi, and John Waters.
Kate Scott is a PhD candidate in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey, where she specializes in American art and the history of photography. She is a Graduate Curatorial Assistant at the Zimmerli Art Museum.
