BRANDON KENNEDY PHOTOGRAPHY BY MEGAN GELLNER
The Space Between the Words and Our Eyes
Exploring the Mutability of Language and Form with Alicia Eggert
I
like an unexpected entrance to define an introduction and steer a conversation without any planning whatsoever. Pulling in alongside the jagged row of parked cars on the left (and correct!) side of the rather nondescript auto repair shop in north Denton, I gathered my belongings after parking, spotted the “ARTIST” placard mounted on the metal door to my right, and stepped out of my hatchback into the sunlight. Beyond the opening sway of the door, a steady stream of classic R & B wafted past the large storage racks, files, and orderly stacks of materials and boxes as you enter Alicia Eggert’s studio. The central studio floor was taken up by an artwork that was fulfilling its performative role, having just arrived back from a show at the University of Arkansas, and rhythmically inflating one side of its words in ALL CAPS, “NOW” in black and “THEN” in white (with contrasting stitching), both six-foot tall, sans serif, in a two-minute off/on constant cycle, then and now sucking the life out of the other and then puffing themselves up (with the dual generator box dividing their pronouncements), while testing for any damage or operational issues. After being led in by her studio assistant Tucker, I fell two paces back and was immediately confronted with the “W” in “NOW” becoming fully formed and approaching my height, blocking my path and introduction temporarily. Everywhere you look in Eggert’s studio you encounter text in various forms; photographed documentation of sculptures/ installations/performances (whose lenticular format mimics both a kinesthetic viewing art stroll and a neon flicker); the newest work just picked and hung for inspection, a cherry red reflective vinyl rectangular sign with “NOWHERE” inset within a highway sign border and format, flicking on and off the various combinations of its parts; the preceding flaccid nylon forms of NOW/THEN 44
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(2018), both echoing and mocking the sign above while lying defenseless on the floor just below; A-HA in acrid yellow neon, which was installed not as intended but still legible above the artist’s desk at almost six feet across in ALL CAPS. This work originally hung in the space above Liliana Bloch’s gallery entrance door as a wry commercial beacon with twin waves of enlightenment and humor crashing upon its coastal rocks. Just around the corner where we sit and chat while looking at and discussing the subtle variations of font and medium, an artifact of institutional signage, a “blade” of faux wood-grained plastic, rests in a brass receiving base, projecting 90 degrees into the room. The object is commonly known as a corridor sign; this one custom-engraved and revealing the white below in ACSS (all caps sans serif) with “NOW” on one side and “THEN” on the opposite. Between Now And Then (2008) posits both the question of the physical object, the gentle dislodging of intended context, and the greater question of the unknown measurement of the space that separates the two words and concepts. This simple assisted readymade gesture from 10 years ago, which Eggert states “divides time and space,” also marks both for her as it represents a turning point in her work and a focus purely on the textual form. For the fifth edition of the AURORA festival this November— newly clustered around City Hall in downtown Dallas—Eggert utilized a grassy hill in front of the Convention Center to install her All the Light You See Is from the Past (2017), a white neon ACSS work in three lines, flashing in three sequences of illuminating all the words, then only “All You See Is Past,” and finally with all the words going dark. The illuminated rumination rests affixed to a steel scaffolding measuring 15 by 15 feet and six feet deep. Eggert had previously installed the artwork on a different billboard-style frame on top of a building on the boundary of a gentrifying Philadelphia
