Looking at images that don't function as text, images that do function as a text and images that utilize texts to establish a context in which the image then acts as a text.
Josh Smith • Currents_0384, 2009
NOT A TEXT: In general, Josh Smith's paintings offer little more than an aesthetic experience. To behold his work is to simply be viewing pigment smeared across or blotted on a surface. Even in images in which he paints his name, "JOSH SMITH," we get a sense that the words are used only as formal elements.
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Terence Koh • Captain Buddha (installation view), 2008
Terence Koh • Captain Buddha (performance clip), 2008
A TEXT IN ITSELF: In Terence Koh's Captain Buddha, the artist combines pre-existing cultural objects to create objects of ritual and consecrates their new meaning through narrative and performance.
Terence Koh • i sit at the back of a chinese rickshaw and feel nothing above me but a heaven then a white rose just like you, 2008
Sculpture - Bronze, 24 karat gold plating, white paint, scratches and white paint applied by artist's hand during performance
Diameter 141 x depth 17 cm (55 x 7 inches)
The work creates a text of its own, which the artist refers to later during his interaction with the objects through performance. The objects of Captain Buddha that bear scratches also act as a document of the ritual carried out upon them.
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Irena Knezevic • The Summit (installation view), 2007
IMAGE USING TEXT: Irena Knezevic's installation The Summit is a collection of objects that individually and collectively are inspired by and embody very specific historical texts including those regarding black magic, mysticism, Russian Constructivism, death metal and Afro-Futurism. In addition to representing actual texts, the objects, images and performances of The Summit are encompassed in a narrative of their own.
A few specific texts that are present in The Summit are included in the following
- Mikhail Bulgakov's "The Master and Margarita"
- Handwritten notes and poetry in the broadsheets of "Pathways to Unknown Worlds: Sun Ra, El Saturn and Chicago's Afro-Futurist Underground, 1954-68"
- G.W.F Hegel's writing on German Romanticism and German Idealism