Specifically for the ICA presentation, his first museum show, Anthony Campuzano has fabricated two large freestanding bulletin boards collaged with hand-drawn text.
Known for his use of found language, Philadelphia-based artist Anthony Campuzano activates texts from a variety of sources—newspaper headlines, Wikipedia entries, the covers of paperback novels, trivial cultural events, common clichés, pop song lyrics—in drawings that couple intense color with the tangible presence of the artist’s hand. Like his journalistic sources, Campuzano’s use of language condenses—he distills language into succinct phrases that express a particular mood, recall a personal anecdote, or echo a national headline. What is removed textually is replaced visually through bold color and the blocky, erratic shapes of his letters, defying the formality of the printed page, and its capacity for endless reproduction, with the deliberate imperfection of the hand. Campuzano dubs his obsession with color and language “abstract journalism.” As the sentences dip and dodge through the composition, the act of reading alternately slows or quickens; sometimes lines are reread, sometimes skipped. Regardless of the route taken, the performance of the text becomes central.