Raven Kwok, Glyphshift (still), 2024, generative art, software, dimensions variable, edition of 6
Ames Yavuz is excited to present Paratext, a group exhibition in which 7 new media artists map out novel ways of engaging with text as image–as symbols, as signs, as poetry.
The concept of ‘paratext’ was formalised in the 1980s by French literary theorist Gérard Genette who coined the term to refer to textual and visual material that surrounds the main text. It can be information directly accompanying the text, such as how it is laid out on a page, or it can be material even outside of the published matter itself. Paratext has the ability to aid and shape one’s reading and receiving of a text and is a significant threshold to introduce a text to the reader. In recent years, the shapes in which paratexts have taken have shifted drastically. In a time where our lives are increasingly mediated by algorithms and screens, our relationships to text have evolved greatly—as has the paratext that frames us.
The exhibition brings together the works of seven artists—Emily Edelman, Jo Ho, Raven Kwok, Kapilan Naidu, Ong Kian Peng, Andreas Schlegel, and Sasha Stiles, who are all keenly interested in glyph, type, poetry and text. Their works consider how new technologies can be co-writers to our words, as well as mediators and translators to how our texts appear. Building on the rich and diverse history of text as image, these artists engage with autonomous systems, generative software, machine intelligence and more, reflecting upon the expanding ways in which we can experience word as image today.
Venue: Ames Yavuz, Gillman Barracks, 9 Lock Road, #02-23, Singapore 108937
When: 20 Jul - 17 Aug 2024, 11am - 7pm Tue–Sat
By: Ames Yavuz
