Artist Talk - Joel Swanson

I attended Joel Swanson's talk on campus. His work focuses on language and typography. His pieces all have a black and white palate and typically feature words. Much of his work is  focused on wordplay like the piece Homophone that has the words right, write, and rite overlaid over each other. His work all focused on the idiosyncrasies of language and how to represent these things we take for granted and make them exist in a sculpture. He doesn't use color in his works and typically uses black text on white backgrounds, and is usually minimalist. In contrast he made an entire wall of handwritten ampersands that was very labor intensive and visually busy. In another piece he has an LED light up whenever Lady Gaga tweets, I thought his works were all very similar except for the two i just mentioned.
He talked about his work being in conversation with Sol Lewitt and Heidegger.  I didn't think his work approached these influences really, Swanson's work seemed like one liners to me that were more focused on being clever than making a statement. I was most interested in his idea that language really affects how a person thinks and how it effects the culture that it's spoken in. I wish he would show more of that idea in his work, however I was impressed with the technique of his work and I liked the clean aesthetic. It could make his message very clear if there really was one. Overall I think Joel Swanson could potentially make very interesting works about language and how it affects someone's world view, and his current work feels more like design than art.