Online Exhibition | WORDS

22 Jun-19 Jul 2020

Overview

JOHN BALDESSARI | MEL BOCHNER | ANDREA BOWERS | MARCEL BROODTHAERS | MERLIN CARPENTER | BETHANY COLLINS | GEORGE CONDO | DEXTER DALWOOD | JENNY HOLZER | DONNA HUDDLESTON | PAULINA OLOWSKA | RICHARD PRINCE | GARY SIMMONS | BETTY TOMPKINS | CY TWOMBLY | LAWRENCE WEINER | HEIMO ZOBERNIG Simon Lee Gallery is pleased to present WORDS, a group exhibition that explores the function of language and the role of text in art making. Whether dealing in political statements, ribald asides, poetry and literature or illegible scrawls and scribbles, the works in this exhibition comment on the ways in which ideas are exchanged and communication effected. While the visual language of an artist’s vernacular is well trodden ground, WORDS highlights the way in which – from the late 1960s onwards – conceptual art practice delved into notions of authorship, aesthetics and the dematerialisation of the traditional art object, in the pursuit of complicating the relationship between the verbal and the visual. Taking words and language as both subject and medium, the works presented explore the interrelation of form and meaning, and the distinction between looking at and reading a painting.