Katie Tuss on Mark Cameron Boyd at the Katzen

Logocentric Playground at the Katzen

By Katie Tuss

Washington area based artist Mark Cameron Boyd has been using his own deconstructed, re-contextualized sentences as the subject of his current body of work since 2003. Boyd’s thoughtful, challenging pieces utilize “text as a language for painting” while questioning the accepted systems of meaning and conventional constructs of art and communication.

In the installation Logocentric Playground, currently on view at the Katzen Arts Center, Boyd encourages visitors to engage him in an unspoken conversation using any of the three blackboards in the first floor gallery space. The boards display handwritten, original text by Boyd in red and white chalk.

Employing painter’s tape in his signature erasure method, Boyd obscures either the top or bottom of the upper case letters in each sentence. Crisp black lines alternate horizontally between truncated peaks of the letter “A” and severed curves of the letter “P.” Bisected red words meet bisected white letters, one on top of the other, altering the artist’s initial transcription.

A piece of chalk, but no eraser, can be found underneath each blackboard. Seemingly without hesitation Katzen Center visitors have picked up the artist’s discourse.

Viewers have interpreted the inconclusive text by completing interrupted letters and adding words and original symbols above, on top of, and around Boyd’s phrases.

Despite the interactive component of the piece, it doesn’t require any contribution to the installation to appreciate the original enigmatic markings and the development of Boyd’s relationship with the viewer and the piece over time.

Boyd plans on returning to Logocentric Playground at least once a week to remove, restore, and respond to his conversation partners. The installation's progress can be tracked on the artist’s Web site.

Logocentric Playground is on view through December 15, 2006.

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Disclaimer: I (Lenny not Katie), in the past, have curated Boyd's work into several shows focused on "text."