Text as an Expressive Medium in Contemporary Art. Creative Strategies

Abstract

The subject of this paper is text as an expressive medium within contemporary visual art. The article aims to identify the key creative strategies of contemporary artists working with text, viewed through the lens of the creative gesture. The topic is timely because, for much of the 20th century, text did not serve as an independent form of artistic expression; initially, its primary function was to articulate an art movement's rationale through manifestos. Today, however, we observe a shift toward using text as an indispensable element of contemporary visual art. Furthermore, renewed interest in zine culture and other forms of editioned publications suggests that this field requires analysis and systematisation. The methodology relies on formal description and comparative analysis, given that the material under study belongs to the contemporary era. The article identifies two primary strategies artists use in this field: text as object and text as an ephemeral element. Within these strategies, the author highlights the work of artists currently developing their practice. This approach makes it possible to trace the evolving relevance of text in contemporary visual art. The study distinguishes between more "classical" works - where artists interpret the alphabet or the image of the book-and cutting-edge forms such as "art & science," where text may be interpreted as a product of machine-generated creativity. This framework allows for the application of philosophical concepts such as "atmosphere" and "auto-curation" terms that gained prominence in the 1990s and 2010s, respectively to the analysis.