• 17 artists from Tierra showing text-based art!
• Interactive: write on the walls!
• “Exquisite Dream”: a sound installation!
• Zine workshop August 1st!
• Live poetry reading August 11th!
• New poetry book launch!
How do you use your words? Are they spoken, written, drawn, signed, or something else entirely? In Words Matter, an interactive group exhibition featuring seventeen artists, expression takes every possible form. Text becomes kaleidoscopic, expanding the possibilities of language and storytelling in works that are by turns serious, playful, and surreal. A celebration of voice in the face of marginalization and silence, Words Matter insists that communication itself can be a radical gesture.
Words Matter invites visitors to tag, write, draw, and mark the walls of the gallery, acting as a collaborative word-mural and a record of everyone’s voices throughout the show’s run. Framed text-based artworks will be on view while a lounge area, featuring handmade word-themed Craftsman chairs designed by Darren Romanelli, will provide an opportunity to read and explore a library of artist-made zines and publications.
Exquisite Dream, an on-site audio installation in which recorded voices of Tierra’s studio artists recount their dreams, will play in the Annex space. Taking inspiration from the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse, these individual recordings will be stitched together into one collective audio work, mirroring the interactive collaborative aspect of the show.
The artworks of Words Matter startle with their bold approach to text. Leon Fuller, an artist who was part of Tierra del Sol’s art program in the late 90s, takes inspiration from mass media to combine text and drawing in revelatory ways. Christopher Knight, in his L.A. Times review of Fuller’s 2001 solo exhibition at Richard Heller Gallery, writes, “Fuller mixes the known and the unknown, the familiar and the invented, finally making you wonder whether all celebrity isn’t just a crazed composition of interchangeable replicants churned out by an imaginary tool and die company.” By contrast, Mary Lou Dimsdale’s psychedelic approach pulls text fragments from news reports, websites, and articles, the pieces vibrating with electric linework and mosaic style colors. Joe Zaldivar sees words as an opportunity to create striking contrasts, combining fictional advertisements based on real brands with text of Zaldivar’s own choosing, creating images the world never knew it needed. In this exhibition, there is more than one way to make a statement.
Words Matter is on view July 18 to September 5 at Tierra del Sol Gallery. This exhibition features the work of Douglas Allen, Daniel Anten, Marlena Arthur, Mary Lou Dimsdale, Leon Fuller, Jenna Greene, Jose Hernandez, Herb Herod, Evan Hynes, Kyle Johnson, Drucilla “Dru” McKenzie, Zoe Morales, John Peterson, Hugo Rocha, Chloe Simunovic, Liza Torres, and Joe Zaldivar. Words Matter will have a zine-making workshop Saturday, August 1st, and a live poetry reading Tuesday, August 11th. A new
poetry book will also be released to coincide with the exhibition’s run.
