Formats
Anthologies
96
Audio
309
Catalogues
441
Clothing
23
Editions
38
Ephemera
75
Literary
44
Monographs
192
Posters
299
Video
40
Zines
136

Shop > Artists' Books

#15271

The Dark Redacted

Artist
Donna Szoke
Writer
Gary Barwin
Price
$10.00
Date
2020
Publisher
Small Walker Press
Format
Artists' Books
ISBN
ISBN 978-1-9990860-4-6
Description

Donna Szőke thoughtfully investigates the fluidity of meaning and presence in her work as an artist of growing national reputation. Rather than elucidating a concept or an experience, she proposes a semi-abstract perusal of collective or intimate issues. Offering a reflection on the evocative instability of the biographical and the personal, and opting for an approach close to autofiction, her work constellates subtle possibilities and its scope defies the limitations of certainty. The artist is a compelling storyteller for whom the quest for meaning and the vagrancies of that search are more significant than plain facts. For The Dark Redacted Szőke proposes traces of a fragile story and never-faltering endurance. Her sequence of images alternates beautifully detailed natural life—a buffalo, intricate vegetation—and minimally sketched-out human presence and personal objects. As a result, her work addresses the viewers’ intuition and sensitivity to the environment.

Szőke’s work is mirrored in Gary Barwin’s text. Without ever becoming too urgent or rapid, his narrative is built on a crescendo and ends as an incantation. A playful style, suggestive wordplays, intuitive associations and magic creations of word-made spaces add to the careful constructedness of the project as a whole and create the impression that an intimate conversation is happening between the narrator and the artist’s persona. At the core is an overwhelming sense of loss reflecting on the power of language or poetics to capture the quintessential paradox of what it is to be human, sentient and cognizant of our own fate. The idea of the ephemeral inveigles Barwin’s prose, which in turn illuminates the tapestry of Szőke’s hand-drawn illustrations. Spare in execution but visually poignant, they are a world into which we eagerly slip if not vanish.

  1. The dark redacted.jpeg
 

Related Items

  1. Cloud
  2. Arc, a choreographed poem
  3. Shawn Serfas: Inland
  4. Alejandro Cartagena: Built To Ruin
  5. Thomas Ayouti and Devon Fornelli: Improvising Places Improvising Time
  6. Derek Knight: Industrial Niagara
  7. Landon MacKenzie and Pauline Johnson Tekahionwake: Beneath a Velvet Moon
  8. Jason Stefanik / Jay Stafinak , Paul Savoie, and Marjorie Kaniehtonkie Skidders: Tewaaraton. La crosse / Lacrosse
  9. Rebekka Hilmer Heltoft: Drawn To The Pencil; Dark Light Glitter
  10. Donna Chung and Tim Lokiec: Casual Living
  11. Rick Myers: Three Days
  12. Jonny Petersen: The World’s Best Cookie
  13. Brandon Downing: Lake Antiquity
  14. Isabelle Cornaro: Black Maria
  15. AA Bronson: Tick-Tock
  16. Laura Calvi: Untitled
  17. Ryan Foerster
  18. Soner Ön: The Light In The Dark, With The Neon Arms
  19. Eldon Garnet: Saved & Drowned
  20. Daryl Vocat: Pact For Adventure
  21. Nicola Pecoraro: Triton
  22. Gary Starks: The Problem With Using Oneself as Subject Matter
  23. Secret Life
  24. Andrew J Paterson: Grammar and Not-Grammar: Selected Scripts and Essays by Gary Kibbins
  25. The What If?... Scenario (after LG)
  26. Where Grape Leaves Grow
  27. Erik Schubert: How to Win Friends and Influence People
  28. Lars Ahlstrom and Hans Anders Molin: Airspace
  29. David Askevold and Christina Ritchie: Activating the Archive 4: Double Agent