Read Me! Text in Art is a survey of the variety of media and approaches to language in contemporary art. It will include work by Lisa Anne Auerbach, Andrea Bowers, Shannon Ebner, Dustin Ericksen, Charles Gaines, Alexandra Grant, Vishal Jugdeo, Mary Kelly, Glenn Ligon, Ken Lum, Lucas Michael, My Barbarian, Jack Pierson, Glynnis Reed, Guan Rong, Emily Roysdon, Lara Schnitger, Stephanie Taylor, and Mark Titchner. The exhibition is organized by Malik Gaines.

Contemporary urban life is wrapped in language. From our interaction with public spaces to the forms of our innermost thoughts, words shape the world as we know it. While theories of Western art have occasionally sent language to the margins of aesthetic pleasure, the vast history of art—from illuminated manuscripts to silk rugs; from calligraphy to conceptual art—has held a central place for the well-considered word. Citing all of these influences and many more, the artists assembled for this group exhibition give proof of the expanded roles text is playing in recent contemporary art. These artists wield words as content and form, making visual statements that can be nonsensical or serious, activist or frivolous, and sometimes all of these at once. Speaking through videos, drawings, paintings, collage, textiles, and photos, these works ask the viewer to “Read Me.”

In the exhibition, Emily Roysdon’s Untitled/POW, for example, is a meditation on repetitive movements and recurring powers that uses text within the video to create a relationship between the “act of writing” and forces “out-of-frame.” Lisa Anne Auerbach's work combines knitting with images and text to voice her concerns on social issues about terrorism and war. The show includes two of her textile banners which state, “things can only get worse” and “things can only get better.” Vishal Jugdeo’s recent video work uses language to examine concepts of theatre and the stage. Ken Lum creates images from bisected urban street signs to question our understanding of language and the city. The exhibit will be open from December 9 - February 24.