Mixed Media Asemic Writing: Meaning Less, Making Sense
If you have trouble interpreting asemic writing when you’re looking at it, don’t worry. Everything is as it should be. As you gaze at a work, let your mind do what it wants. The meaning is up to you, so there’s no real pressure to “get it.” It is the kind of art for which you get to invent your own story, creating narratives out of half-formed type, forms that seem like words, and patterns that might be letters or musical notes or shapes that are not quite one thing or another. Asemic writing is only quasiwriting, appearing in the environment, for instance, as graffiti in which words and symbols are too abstracted to be explicitly understood. It is also a tradition in fine art, where its absence of meaning creates freedom for the artist as well as the viewer.
GVG Contemporary (241 Delgado St.) highlights the asemic writing tradition in a group show, Asemic Writing: Meaning Less, Making Sense, opening with a public reception at 5 p.m. on Friday, June 22. Featured artists include GVG Contemporary owners Blair Vaughn-Gruler and Ernst Gruler; the former makes process-oriented paintings, while the latter is known for fine-art furniture and sound sculptures. Elle MacLaren makes encaustic paintings in which she explores the relationship between people and their environments, while whimsy and texture inform the mixedmedia paintings of Lori Schappe-Youens. All mediums have a home in asemic writing, including Renee Lauzon’s erasure poems in sound, Bird
Person and We Are Where We Are Not, both of which prompt listeners to eschew cognitive understanding while allowing the sounds to activate their senses. Meaning Less, Making Sense is on display until July 13. For more information, visit gvgcontemporary.com.