Gail Tarantino
's work investigates language's structure, rhythm and codes. Thinking about language, writing systems, forms of communication and its myriad of meaning have been a continuous thread in daily creative pursuits. Creating short narratives, translations and the distillation of language are a reoccurring fascination. Ricocheting between painting, drawing and photography, ideas coalesce.
Several bodies of work have used text. Work from the ongoing "HandWritten" series developed from an idea of writing actual letters to individuals whose work I had admired. A handwritten letter is becoming more of an oddity in contemporary life, requiring a more stationary posture while recording thought onto a page. Looking to recreate a writing process that might reenact a potentially quiet, contemplative state became an intriguing idea. Each colored dot represents a letter. While recording the letters into a non- alphabetic character, a new literacy temporarily emerges before becoming lost in the translation. I want to take the reading out of the viewer’s experience, and create an undecipherable, yet familiar abstracted version of language.
