Overview
An initial collaboration of The Sala Diaz / Transformer Exchange Project, sub-TEXT brings three visual artists from San Antonio, Texas' premier artist,directed exhibition space Sala Diaz to Transformer for an exhibition of text based multimedia work. Sala Diaz has provided space and support for artists and curators locally and internationally for the last eight years.
Organized by Guest Curator Henry Estrada and Sala Diaz Director/Curator Hills Snyder, sub-TEXT, as described by Estrada, "explores the hidden, implied and underlying content in words and texts when taken out of their original context and re-presented in another. Using text as a central image, or as a vehicle to invoke images, the artists in sub-TEXT expand our understanding of how words are deciphered and meaning is constructed through visual literacy."
Inspired by art cinema classics, Jesse Amado has imbued a new series of post-minimalist, conceptual art works with narrative content taken from screenplays and movie subtitles. Andrea Caillouet's one-word text messages appear in unexpected places, sometimes emboldened on commercial billboards, and sometimes printed on small pieces of folded paper that the artist clandestinely inserts into library books. Encountered by chance, and presented without context, these enigmatic word graphics confound and incite the viewer to decode them. Working primarily with commercial photography, typography and computer imaging, Chuck Ramirez humorously comments on how cultural identity can be (in)formed and expressed by the choices we make as consumers.
In addition to launching Transformer's 2004/2005 exhibition series, sub-TEXT marks the beginning of The Sala Diaz / Transformer Exchange Project - a collaborative exploration that aims to build relationships between two artist-centered organizations. Through a series of exhibition projects and public forums to take place in Washington D.C. and San Antonio, Texas in 2004 and 2005, this initiative seeks to provide opportunities for artistic exchange while fostering a mutually enriching dialogue between two organizations that, however similar, have each emerged from distinct cultural regions, and have each developed their own organizational structures appropriate to their community of artists and audiences.
