Tony Lewis: free movement power nomenclature pressure weight
Published by Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, 2015
Texts and contributions by Rose Bouthillier and Julian Myers-Szupinska
Edited by Rose Bouthillier
In his expansive drawing practice, Tony Lewis uses action and language to explore communication, presence, and authority. Focusing on graphite powder as a basic material element, his works emphasize the body through scale, tension, and imprint. This publication accompanied Lewis’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland, free pressure movement power weight nomenclature. In keeping with the process-driven, non-hierarchical nature of Lewis’s work, the word order of the exhibition’s title was kept in flux.
The exhibition featured six new large-scale works from Lewis’s recently begun series of Gregg Shorthand drawings. Invented in 1888, Gregg Shorthand is a now-outmoded phonetic writing system, where particular line forms correspond to spoken sounds. Each of the drawings features one of the words from the exhibition’s title, which collectively speak to Lewis’s process and concerns. These solitary hand-written characters emphasize the fluid, abstract, gestural nature of notation. The exhibition will also featurd two of Lewis’s floor drawings, which begin as graphite-coated paper floor coverings for entire rooms. After their initial installation, they are pulled up and compressed into sculptural objects, which are transformed each time they are exhibited, accumulating marks, creases, and tears.
Lewis also installed a large text piece, visible from the Museum’s monumental stair. Made with nails, stretched rubber bands, and graphite, this work is part of a series based on excerpts from Life’s Little Instruction Book by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. First encountered by the artist in his mother’s bathroom, this book has gone on to play an influential role in his practice. In isolated and magnifying these “instructions,” Lewis shifts their meaning and reveals the ways in which they assume, exclude, and exert power, while also speaking to personal fears and desires.
The publication includes essays by Rose Bouthillier and Julian Myers-Szupinska, documentation of the exhibition and works, and photographs of Lewis’s studio in Chicago. The cover of the publication mimics the pink butcher paper that Lewis uses to create his floor drawings.
47 pages, softcover
25 × 14.5 cm
ISBN 978099955058
