alphstatement

Alphabet

Letters, characters and symbols inherent in languages worldwide serve as inspiration for the Alphabet ink drawings. As ornamental lines sag and sway, twist and intersect, or spill out in various directions, the flowing movement of the pen parallels the act of breathing. However, upon magnification of linear details, all notions of familiarity are abandoned. Regardless of the viewer’s level of fluency in any particular language, irregular characters create an imaginary form of communication verbalized by a non-existent culture speaking an array of untranslatable sounds and meanings.

It seems preposterous that so much care is given to the obsessive rendering of a vocabulary that cannot be decoded. But consider the words of philosopher, Walter Benjamin: “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”