Chris Burden, Raven Chacon, Hanne Darboven, Dan Graham, Christina Mackie, Liz Magor, Ian Wallace Unexplained Parade, Part Two February 9–May 11, 2019
eins zwei eins zwei drei vier fünf sechs sieben acht neun zehn elf zwölf dreizehn veirzehn fünfzehn sechzehn siebzehn achtzehn neunzehn zwanzig einundzwanzig zweiundzwanzig drieundzwanzig vierundzwanzig fünfundzwanzig sechsundzwanzig siebenundzwanzig achtundzwanzig neuenundzwanzig dreissig einunddreissig zweiunddreissig dreiunddreissig vierunddreissig fünfunddreissig sechsunddreissig siebenunddreissig achtunddreissig neununddreissig vierzig einundvierzig zweiundvierzig dreiundvierzig eins zwei drei
—Hanne Darboven, 1971
Language as material is opaque. In this sense, words become sequences of letters rather than meanings, syntax becomes a condition of iconographic density, the “nearness of points” in the topological sense, rather than a chain of meanings which complete a thought. Reading opaque language involves a direct perceptual recognition of the body, the physicality, the format of the iconography. Conventional language is transparent. The reader does not see the iconography of transparent language, there is no delay between the recognition of the word and the chain of meanings and associations it brings. Meanings which do not involve a delay are meanings which are taken for granted. Opacity, involving delay, brings both instability and openness to the meaning.
—Ian Wallace, 1969
I migrated from the word to the visible, from the idea to the thing. … From one point of view, making art is a way of testing the positions one might take relative to the world, and the people and things found in the world. The materials, the images, the operations, the forms of address, they all come from an inventory of possibilities and I’m conscious of my choices. By now I have an enhanced ability to make things, but a diminished need for those things to speak symbolically or profoundly.
