” DEAD WORDS – SEMANTIC RESURRECTIONS”
© Ivan Cangelosi, 2024
100 x 80 cm
Ink on paper
Technique – Handwriting
Both in meaning and in technique, as well as in the chromatic tones, this work is antithetical (and therefore must be observed in contrast) to the Artwork entitled “Living words: the DNA of a literary text”.
It is entitled “Dead words: semantic resurrections” and was created by inverting the relationship between the number of vertical and horizontal lines drawn in work “The DNA of a literary text”, i.e. tracing 188,213 horizontal lines and 9,132 vertical lines using dark color shades (black and 2 variations of grey). The figures “emerged” from the superposition of the horizontal lines are random, in the sense that they can be considered the extemporaneous and indeterminate result of the creative process.
The two works have in common the issue of the relationship between the semantic value of the written text (and words in general) and the image. In the painting “Living words: the DNA of a literary text”, the strength and ability of words to communicate a concept in a precise and unambiguous way are represented through an orderly and colorful image. In the painting “Dead words: semantic resurrections”, the concept explained above is reversed: the lines are no longer vertical and colored but horizontal, flat, black and gray as if they were “dead”.
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