Slow Learner, Timothy Taylor Gallery

Andreas Leventis, Timothy Taylor Gallery’s in-house curator, brings us a medley of conceptual experiments surrounding text, signs, symbols and photography this summer

Conceptual musings

A lot of the 20th century was spent claiming that words aren’t all that they seem. The idea emerged that meaning can not only be found in the signified real-object that a word describes, but also in the formal aspect of language as a series of marks on a page. So is the same true for art? If the value of ‘art’ is in what the object means then what is the point of making something beautiful? Surely it can just be meaningful, no matter what it looks like?

What's it all about?

If you think this is a mess we heartily agree with you, and the exploration of this mess is what the artists bought together by Andreas Leventis at the Timothy Taylor Gallery this summer seek to explore. Using ‘text, signs, symbols, and photographic images across a range of media’, the group examine what we normally take for granted: what is this sign referring to? How can I know what it really means? It is tricking me? How do I know what it means, by what process? With this playful discussion of how we comprehend words, signs and images you might find yourself asking “What does it mean?” Fear not: that’s precisely the point.

The exhibition

John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Susan Hiller, Ed Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner, who feature in the exhibition, are pioneers of the backlash against aesthetics and formal beauty over the essential idea of art. According to their games with words and meanings, the world of signs hovers above the world of objects with nothing tethered directly to anything. All these elements only have their meaning by being related to other things. And let’s not forget that if you write a word or make a mark then that mark is also a thing itself. “Everything is unstable” they whisper, “and almost impossibly deep.” Still confused? Luckily you have until the 23rd of August to get down there and figure it out.