1. Lost & Found Wing

2. The Arcade

3. Dignified, Signified Sign Wing

When we assign words, sounds, symbols, to represent individual things, we create a sign. Signs have two components:

• A signifier: the form which the sign takes:

• The signified: the concept it represents:

You may enter the business.

Signs take the form of words, images, sounds, odors, flavors, acts or objects, but such things have no intrinsic meaning and become signs only when we invest them with meaning. As modern culture becomes increasingly saturated with media images, new cultural forms and expressions, consumerist trends and needs, there has been a remarkable proliferation of signs. Many scientists, artists, psychologists, and philosophers have described the signifier-sign pattern operating in areas outside of language. Some very smart people have begun to wonder if the exponential pace of modernity is thrusting us so deep into the world of signs we might become trapped.

4. Research & Development Wing

5. Homeland Security Wing

6. Chicken Wing

7. Gift Shop Wing

8. Stage Wing

9. Gender Identity Wing

Curator’s Statement

Why does a sad story make us cry? What’s going on in our mind when a good joke makes us laugh out loud? Can we possibly explain how the made-up sounds and marks we call words and letters have such a big impact on us?

We use language every day and rarely ever stop using it long enough to wonder at how strange and amazing its very existence is. While many animals and plants communicate, the system of inventing and assigning sounds and symbols (words) to things and combining them into sentences using a common structure (grammar) is uniquely human. The system allows us to convey complex ideas freely and easily and is, perhaps, our greatest evolutionary adaptation. It is the foundation of all human achievement, compassion, and altruism. It is also the means by which structures of power have oppressed, and a prison in which people have lost their minds.

Visual art is uniquely suited to examine something so ubiquitous as language. When we enter a gallery, we arrive prepared to stop and search its contents for underlying implications or personal meaning. And whereas some degree of experience and specialized knowledge are sometimes required for engaging with contemporary art, our shared experience of language–the very thing that makes it work– is a thread that includes us all.

It is with this focus on engagement that the artists in this exhibition have been charged to work out the beauty, weirdness, joy, and possibilities of language. Some have used text as a medium like paint, while others use it to both convey and critique meaning. Through a broad range of materials, media, and approaches, these new works give us the opportunity to pause and reconsider language for the odd, fantastic creation it is.

Participating Artists

Amy Ahlstrom
Kirkman Amyx
Erin Bregman
Lanell Dike
Arash Fayez
Jon Fischer
Jonathan Frey
Heather Gordon
Jon Gourley
Benjamin Hill
Clint Imboden
Mike Kimball
Helen Lee
Yuki Maruyama
John Patrick McKenzie
Janice Miyagi
Trevor Parham
Meryl Pataky
Kyle Peets
Kristin Roeder
Allyson Seal
Laurie Szujewska
Nowell Valeri
David Wolf
Nanette Wylde
Amber Jean Young
Daniel Yovino