Words of Encouragement - (2014)

“All that which goes unspoken. Fictive positivity and mediated negativity. Hopeless relativity or relativism. A question with a lost modus. A gift in kind or in turn; an expectation of the former or latter. A truth set forth with purpose, or a dead lie with same purpose.  Drawing relationships, a meta-attempt at discerning the word, or which word.

What might be lost within these movements is the closeness that underscores, or occasionally, the distance, that settles the matter. Whatever we read in these conversations in which we embroil ourselves, others, and the language alongside. These items are not up for discussion.”

Words of Encouragement examines the rigid structure of art language and the unilateral authority of the formally written document. Personalized correspondences requesting letters of recommendation for the artist were dispatched to both qualified and likely individuals, and those potentially less, or entirely not, qualified as references. Encouraged to express artistic agency, the recipients of the request were then free to determine their own degrees of authenticity and formality.

EXHIBITION: TRUCK Contemporary Art + 15
TEXT BY: Danielle St-Amour
April, 2014