Vision is elastic. Thought is elastic.

Left: Joy Episalla, 5 Women. Freud's bookcase. London, 2011, pigment print mounted on Plexiglas. Right: David Wojnarowicz, When I Put My Hands on Your Body, 1990, gelatin silver print and silkscreen text on museum board, 26 x 38 inches.

SculptureCenter Curator’s Notebook Entry

Murray Guy, 453 West 17th Street
April 21 – June 4, 2011

Murray Guy is currently presenting a curatorial project by Moyra Davey and Zoe Leonard, two prominent artists working in the field of photography today. Davey and Leonard selected artists whose work investigates the various intersections of photography and writing. The range of artists includes Josh Brand, Roy Colmer, Pradeep Dalal, Shannon Ebner, Joy Episalla, William Gedney, Roni Horn, Katherine Hubbard, Babette Mangolte, Mark Morrisroe, Adrian Piper, Claire Pentecost, James Welling, and David Wojnarowicz.

With these diverse photographic works, Davey and Leonard sought to present the symbiotic relationship of text and image. The interchangeability and fluidity of these two forms of communication take on many forms within artistic practice. A highlight was David Wojnarowicz’s When I Put My Hands on Your Body (1990), which consists of a black-and-white photograph of skeletons overlaid with red text describing the sensation of touching the flesh of another person, likely his lover Peter Hujar. Wojnarowicz creates a disjunction between the words and the image, which unexpectedly do not correspond. James Welling’s Diary of Elizabeth and James Dixon (1840-41)/Connecticut Landscapes (1977-86) is a series of diaristic, pedestrian photographs of the outdoors paired with a journal entry. Welling presents the complementary relationship of image and text, both serving to record a personal memory. Another standout piece was Shannon Ebner’s Notebook Pages (2009), comprising ten framed C-prints of lined notebook pages, empty of words. In sequence, each page becomes progressively darker (exposed to more light) perhaps signaling the writing potential or fullness of each. Finally, Roni Horn writes on—or in the case of Still Water (The River Thames, For Example) (1999), footnotes—a photograph in its margins. Miniscule numbers spatter a photograph of the River Thames, with comments such as “I sometimes suspect the Thames of being water” or “The Thames is you.” Davey and Leonard not only highlight the various ways that writing and photography overlap in artist practices and contemporary culture, but also the use of the camera as a writing instrument.