Though there are a relatively small number of works on display at the new(ish) Norma Desmond and those works all employ superficially similar strategies—replacing image with text, or using text to push “image” to the margins—the exhibit, now extended through Dec. 16th, is a great example of the rich possibilities of text in contemporary art, both as a medium and as an end in itself.

    Possibly due to the prevalence of captions and signs and other explanatory text that surrounds us in our daily lives, it may be hard to see non-heightened, stylized or “poetic” text as a productive way of working in the visual arts, but the works here suggest uses of (mostly plain, everyday) text far beyond simple explanation.  In fact, there are four main ways text is at work in Text: Work, each exciting in its own way. 

    First, there’s text as instruction, a way that we’re generally most comfortable with it.  Douglas Huebler’s statements regarding the minimalist images they’re attached to fall into this category, but what makes them so great (and Huebler a great but still under-recognized artist) is that the text works at cross-purposes to the existence of the image, directing us to imagine and believe that what appears to be a flat image is really a dynamic field of planes.  In another, smaller work, the text instructs us to imagine a single point as a world of points, and both opens up and directs our reading of what is essentially a dot made by a pencil on a piece of paper.  By becoming a theoretical “point” at the same time it’s an actual dot, the pencil mark in Huebler’s 1969 work opens "mark-making" up to our imagination.  This gets at why even though at first glance text-as-art may seem dry, it’s actually quite engaging and personable, establishing a different relationship to the viewer than an object whose function is to be looked at first and thought about second.

    The other, equally playful works follow the same principle toward different ends.  If Huebler’s work hinges on text as instruction, Hanne Darboven and Guy de Cointet’s work leans toward text as graphic itself, as its own visual construct with its own rules to be followed or broken by the artist.  The text in de Cointet’s “I have been an insomniac for many years,” for example, recalls both the “writing” drawings of Henri Macheaux as well as 21st century graphic design, and the confusion between reading and seeing in both works is rewarding.

    Finally, even though most of the works at Norma Desmond could be described as such, Olivier Mosset’s two works are great examples of text as performance.  First, there’s a curious drawing from 1994 that lists the names of several dozen “indie” bands of the time. While such a list may seem dry, to someone old enough to recognize at least some of the names (and at my age I recognize most of them) the list becomes at first bizarre, then highly associative. It calls forth in a list a whole world of memories and ideas—a kind of information age answer to Proust’s madeline.  And then, there’s Mosset’s hard-to-spot piece Exit, which I’ll leave up to you to see in the gallery, but when you finally see/read it, it packs a visual punch that, like the rest of the exhibit, was quite worth experiencing.

- Nicholas Grider


(Images, from top to bottom:  Olivier Mosset, Text Works, September 15 - December 16, 2007; Norma Desmond Productions, Exit, Courtesy of Norma Desmond Productions.  Douglas Huebler, Text Works, September 15 - December 16, 2007; Norma Desmond Productions, Installation view, Courtesy of Norma Desmond Productions. Guy de Cointet, Text Works, September 15 - December 16, 2007; Norma Desmond Productions, I Have Been an Insomniac for Many Years, Courtesy of Norma Desmond Productions.)