LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.- Showcasing highlights from the permanent collection of The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Sign Language examines how artists have appropriated the forms and conventions of commercial signage for their own artistic purposes. The exhibition is on view at MOCA at The Geffen Contemporary (152 North Central Avenue) through November 29, 2004.
Organized by MOCA Assistant Curator Michael Darling, the exhibition presents approximately 50 works in a variety of media and genres, including sculpture, painting, photography, and video. Among the artists featured are Robert Barry, Sam Durant, Nancy Dwyer, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Larry Johnson, Craig Kauffman, Barbara Kruger, Milan Kunc, Dave Muller, Manuel Ocampo, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Prince, James Rosenquist, Allen Ruppersberg, Mitchell Syrop, Ron Terada, Andy Warhol, Pae White, and Christopher Wool.
Sign Language explores how artists have incorporated elements of commercial signage into their work, variously highlighting, questioning, and commenting on the transmission of messages, both textually and graphically. Channeling the visual idioms of signage through their own artistic discourse, the artists in the exhibition corrupt the communicative functions of advertising but rely on its unique ability to captivate and persuade an audience. Although incorporating the recognizable formats, materials, and conventions of signs, they often create works that are contradictory to the real world models on which they are based.
Bringing together a diverse selection of works from the 1950s to the present, the exhibition examines a range of themes, such as tourism, religion, politics, institutional and media critiques, and the status of the art object. In Lee Friedlander’s photographs, he captures the pathos, irony, and occasional incomprehension of signs, as seen in works such as Father Duffy, Times Square, New York, New York (1974). Religious and political signs are interpreted as forms of propaganda in Manuel Ocampo’s La Liberte (1990) and Andy Warhol’s Mao Tse-Tung (1972). Claes Oldenburg’s seminal work, Pepsi-Cola Sign (1961), renders a classic icon as a flaccid, drip-strewn mess, representing the antithesis of ad-clarity, while James Rosenquist’s painting, A Lot to Like (1962), borrows techniques from the billboard industry to complicate, rather than simplify, the conveyed message.
Also included in the exhibition are recent acquisitions of works by several younger artists that have not yet been on view. Los Angeles–based artist Dave Muller implicates himself as a commentator on the art world in hand-made posters, such as Damaged Goods (1994) and An Uncommonly Serene Moment (1998). Pae White’s Pony Girl Series: Rotterdam/Silverlake, CA/Tokyo/Curacao/Munich (1996) mimics travel posters of the international art jet set, and young Vancouver artist Ron Terada adapts a standard-issue freeway sign in Entering City of Vancouver (2002). Sam Durant’s We Are The People (2003) recontextualizes a 1960s protest slogan by removing the words from their original format and incorporating them in a slick, illuminated lightbox.
The exhibition portrays a wide variety of approaches to the function and form of signs in the visual environment and illuminates this longstanding concern of many artists. Drawn exclusively from MOCA’s permanent collection, including a special commission by Ron Terada, Sign Language reveals a rich and fascinating vein of activity among a diverse group of artists that, even after 50 years of exploration, still yields new insights.
