20 A9905

Wordnonpseudo

Tony Lewis

Dates
17.09.2015 | 07.11.2015
Location
Massimo De Carlo, Milano
File

Massimo De Carlo gallery is proud to announce the opening exhibition of its 2015-2016 season with a solo show of American artist Tony Lewis.

WORDNONPSEUDO is the first solo show in Italy by Tony Lewis: his practice centers on the relationship between semiotics, language and the universal, creating a narrative that shifts constantly between historical and autobiographical.

WORDNONPSEUDO is a non-word, built to define the role of language within the exhibition. It can be broken into three distinct vocables: “word”, “non”, and “pseudo”. A word is a single distinct meaningful element of speech or writing, whereas a non-word is a group of letters without clear design, or meaning- nonsense. A pseudo-word is somewhere in between: a unit of speech or writing that appears to be a word with implied significance, but in fact has no meaning.

Upon entering the gallery the viewer is confronted with the Gregg Shorthand Drawings*, which are loosely based words, non-words, and pseudo-words. Each micro-gesture within the drawings has a corresponding phoneme, which when combines with other phonemes, builds a word (or non- or pseudo-) or more pointedly, creates a complete string of fluid marks.

The wall drawings in the second room of the gallery are based upon the best seller Life’s Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown. First published in 1991, the book is compiled by a series of ‘rules’ that are suggestions and observations based on general knowledge and common sense. The aim of this happy-go- lucky book is to encourage the reader to live a joyful and rewarding life. Through out the years the book has been reprinted in various editions: in each one the author has added the tips and suggestion he received by his readers. This process has allowed the book to become, in the word of the artist “the embodiment of the ubiquity of conventional American wisdom.” These wall drawings have a slippery balance of sense and nonsense, and of physical authority and hollow platitudes. The sequential entries are placed to face each other- the talk to one another, to command one another. As words of consequence, ignorance, or simply of demanding presence, the drawings transform into pseudo-language with as much agency and purpose as a non-word.

The non-word enhances the denial of coherent language, it becomes the surface. The inability to penetrate the pattern on the paper, and simply recognize the character and it’s corresponding sound is not failure, but the acceptance of the absence of linguistic meaning. The Brick Walls Drawings, a body of work that is shown for the first time in this installation form, also stems from a reflection on language generated by the Life’s Little Instruction Book. These drawings of brick walls covered in graphite translate the impenetrability of the language itself, the visual aggression and the lack of human empathy embedded in the iconography of the wall, representing here the negation of language. Here the paradox of the urban landscape shifts between figuration and abstraction.

* The Gregg Shorthand system is the most widespread form of pen stenography in the United States, invented in 1888 it works through the recording and transcription of the phonetic of words in a writing system based on elliptical figures and lines that bisect them.

Tony Lewis

Tony Lewis was born in 1986 in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in Chicago.


Lewis’s practice focuses on the relationship between semiotics and language to confront social and political topics such as race, power, communication, and labour. Lewis creates drawings using graphite, pencil and paper, mediums the artist uses to trace and develop abstract narratives and reflections on the notion of the gestural. By pushing the boundaries of drawing and the possibilities of abstraction, he expands the use of the “material” of language. As expressed by Melissa Chiu, Director of Hirshhorn Museum: ‘Lewis has quickly established himself in the contemporary art world by forming a distinct visual vocabulary that integrates poetry and text with the properties of abstraction, and his monochromatic drawings pull from various visual and written sources, ranging from the personal to the political. Separating, rearranging, and erasing text, he shifts the way we move through language to open up new and unexpected readings.’


Lewis participated in the 2014 iteration of the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY and was the recipient of the 2017–2018 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence Award at the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA

Tony Lewis Portrait 3 m7 In0y