A Response

Opening up this week at Deitch Projects is Yes and Not Yes, a solo exhibition by San Francisco artist Tauba Auerbach.

I have mixed feelings about this show, as I find her work visually engaging but find her conceptual musings to be rather redundant and to an extent naive.

Quoting a press release from her last Los Angeles show:

"Tauba Auerbach’s work deals with the shortcomings and possibilities of language. Her work approaches language as a technology, a system of symbols by which the internal complexities of a person’s mind, body and general self are converted into an external, transmittable form. Implied in her work is the notion that this conversion process is inexact. Her focus on language is a focus on the space between individuals, the gap they attempt to cross to meet one another intellectually and emotionally, and the nature of the tools they use to do so. Her analysis includes a substantive examination of words, and a deep formal meditation on individual letters. “I feel as though I know each letter intimately—its shortcomings and its tendencies. I feel close to them.” Overall, her work attempts to present a more complicated and flexible version of reality than language customarily allows."

Maybe I am jaded because I am a designer but this all sounds as if she is trying to imply characteristics of written language that have been established since its invention. The written language is a system of abstraction. We all know this(or maybe we dont and this is intended to be some sort of art epiphany). Of course the "conversion" is inexact, but we all need a system to make sense of it all. The history of the modern world would be a series of assumptions, hearsay and exaggerations were it not for the written word.

At most I see her work as a series of abstractions of abstractions. Mostly formal explorations, their intent seems very self fulfilling, inside jokes, obscure observations, simplistic deconstructions.

Language is a funny thing, I agree, but what is more interesting to me is the evolution of it's formal characteristics, historical, modern to post-modern, current trends. What is influencing current type design today? How does slang infiltrate the written word as it has infiltrated the spoken? What about language barriers, is there a way to simplify the tools for smoother comprehension?

more images:

http://www.newimageartgallery.com/tauba.html

Comments

[cameron ewing]

wow. based on the image posted i was really ready to battle you on this one. i think the image you selected is visually compelling. typographically and compositionally strong.

upon further digging into the work, it is clear that it all falls flat. the content is trite (hinting at meaning but never quite delivering), the typography is poor and formally just about all of the pieces feel incomplete. like idea sketches perhaps.

your questions re: slang are intriguing. an inherently ellusive, regional vocabulary that is only relevant to a very specific audience. and when the slang does transcend it is a sign that it has been commodified, appropriated by the media...appearing in sitcoms, etc.

i wonder about this often...does it mean that local vernacular is developing more quickly, to stay ahead of the media machine? or is it the case that local speak is a dying breed; a trajectory leading to the assimilation of the english vocab?