One of the assignments in the “Concepts
in contemporary art”, taught by Elizabeth Barnes, was to write
something on a piece of paper and then cover some of the letters up.
The end result was a very loose composition.
Being a graphic designer, I see text as
font and font as shapes. Often I make images completely out of text.
This is a reverse process, you write and look for shapes that you
want to keep working with and cover or distort the rest.
As I kept thinking of the assignment
ahead, it was important for me to choose the right words. Where an
image can be abstract and hard to understand, words are quite
obvious. I created a weird sentence from words that were brought up
in class and came up with “Vocal language of an absurd art point”.
Since the words did not have any personal meaning, I had no problem
covering anything up and stripping away all meaning. That is
something people in my class struggled with, and it's important to
keep that in mind and be able to distance yourself from the words.
I think the point of writing something
and then hiding it under other layers can be useful in many ways. It
is possible to let out emotions or thoughts that are bottled up
inside, that normally would be hard to share, they will still be
hidden but also out there for everyone to see, sort of a release.
There could also be a personal message hidden in the layers of paint
as expression of the creator to the receiver.
This exercise was highly useful. It
created a very interesting and not forced composition, it is great
for practice when you lack ideas or just want to be pushed out of the
comfort zone to try something new. It is a lovely way to work with
text and has the option to be as literal or abstract as you want it
to be.
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