Lawrence Weiner

1970

Installation, 20.8 x 140.3 cm.
Materials: adhesive letters

Collection: Collection M HKA, Antwerp (Inv. no. BK6122_M122).

*A City Dragged / A City Shored* in fact consists of two autonomous works, each with only a single line of text; they are exemplary of Weiner’s oeuvre that – going back to the 1960s – mainly comprises concepts or ideas that he expresses through text because, according to the artist, the work of art must simply be displayed in order to exist as such. He describes his mural texts as sculptures – sculpted in the mind. *A City Dragged / A City Shored* faces the viewer as six words in black uppercase letters (in Franklin Gothic typeface) on a wall. The words may be hung in different contexts and in any sort of space, the content remains the same. On seeing/reading, historical, cultural or social foreknowledge is not necessary (just a knowledge of the language it’s written in). This makes Weiner’s work timeless; it can never be ‘not understood or misunderstood’) in another time. The words refer to a reality that can be experienced and are not truths or metaphors of the world. Of course, translation can sometimes lose or alter resonances found in the original.