Language is the basis for Alexandra Grant’s drawings and sculptural works. She is interested in the form as well as the content of language, yet surprisingly makes works that cannot be read. While literature, specifically poetry is the source material for her endeavors (her current exhibition used texts by Alfred Lord Tennyson, Michael Joyce and Wislawa Szymborska as well as a quote from the physicist Erwin Schrodinger, and she provides copies of the poems at the desk) it is impossible to read the original line by line. The works are in fact about translation and how the eye and mind interpret a word.

In her debut solo exhibition Grant presents works on paper, works on the walls, works on canvass and works in the air. The drawings on paper are small framed studies, where Grant is able to work out her ideas. In these works the diagrammatic nature of Grant’s work is visible as it is easier to follow a shorter path. Each word is enclosed in a bubble or circle that is linked to the next. Although Grant writes her text in reverse, in these studies it is often possible to make out what the words say.

Clarity disappears in the larger pieces. Grant calls these “drawings without paper” and uses wire to write each poem. A network of intertwining word bubbles is created from the original poem and then hung in front of the wall. To complicate matters, Grant projects a harsh light onto the wire structure casting shadows which she then draws in pencil directly onto the wall. The resulting work resembles a topographical map whose lines fill the spaces between words. The layering of the language and lines creates a pattern on the wall that is both aesthetically pleasing and conceptually challenging as viewers struggle to read the fragments of text. Grant is less interested in the actual reading of the poem in its aestheticized form than in the overall diagramming of the translation.

The wire sculptures themselves are graceful structures.
I Prefer Semana Santa to Holy Week (After Wislawa Szymborska), 2004 is a lengthy poem in which every line begins with “I prefer ?” Grant uses this repeated line of the poem as the connector for each thought as she transforms the poem from paper to wire. Less concerned with representing the original as it was meant to be read, she allows chance to dictate the way the poems shadow falls onto the wall, allowing the fragile nature of the wire to enter into an entropic state. In Nimbus 2004 she uses the words of Michael Joyce’s short text to create a three dimensional wire sculpture that continually rotates while suspended from the ceiling. The shadow cast on the wall becomes a blur, making it impossible to read any of the words. Grant provides a second version of the poem penciled directly onto the wall. What one would think would be the key to the poem/sculpture turns out to be an obfuscation as well. It is impossible to read either version of the text. So why go to the trouble to research and read and select meaningful texts as the basis of one’s art if it becomes impossible to read? Is the purpose of these works reading or looking? How does the mind’s eye put the two together?

“I am what I see” is a quote from the German physicist Erwin Schrodinger. Grant has transformed these words into a pink neon sculpture that is situated outside the gallery. Rather than present the works in German, Schrodinger’s original language, or in English, she has written it in Spanish, and in reverse as well. The visual poetics of the pink neon against the concrete wall becomes more important than the poetics of language. Grant, who is multi-lingual, is aware of these contradictions and plays with them in her work. She is a poet of form and uses other’s language as the source material for her transformations. While what the words say remains important, the works are about the process, the mapping, and the dislocation that results from translating one language to another as well as the transformation of one medium to another.


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