South of Meaning – House of Egorn

House of Egorn is pleased to present a duo exhibition of new works by Travis Jeppesen and Vivien Zhang. South of Meaning shows two practices that break down systemic structures and create new meanings from shards and fragments. In Zhang’s new canvases, objects are arranged and rearranged in layers that repeat over the composition. Themes of repetition, originality, and abstraction emerge from these paintings made from the traces of objects dislocated in time and space. Jeppesen’s works appear as the progression of a long career that started in writing. Object-oriented writing is a process developed by Jeppesen as a result of the gestural and bodily interaction involved in handwriting. He describes the new works on paper as an exploded notebook, an intimate collection of thoughts, experiments, and the bold calligraphic style that emits the powerful gesturality of writing. Both practices lead towards an idea of writingthat exists outside of language or words.

Language is a system that is broken apart and recombined to create new meanings, unable to be expressed through language alone. Vivien Zhang’s Interrobang crosses into the field of writing and gives an anchor to the exhibition. The word was coined in the 1960’s by Martin Speckter for the field of advertising. It is a name for the visual combination of an exclamation point and a question mark. It can be written “!?” or “?!” to give a multiple emphasis. The idea of punctuation ties the exhibition together as rules from grammar transcribe into the exhibition space itself to create the hang. The pieces communicate spatially forming their own systems andwebs of meaning.

Whether abstracting objects or sentences, there remains a feeling of fragility. If a system can be broken down, allowing for flexibility and playfulness, it also reveals its seams and vulnerabilities.

- Ángels Miralda