The Image of Language: An Artist's Memoir

Michael Winkler never had any plans to become an artist. On a rainy Seattle night in December of 1980, he discovered, by accident, that there are inexplicably meaningful patterns encoded in the signs for words. The relationship between the meaning of words and the patterns they create was so fascinating that he explored it all night. The next morning, a chance encounter with a curator resulted in an offer to present the 'word-images' in a solo exhibition. Michael Winkler has now explored the imagery and implications of the patterning hidden in the signs of language for over 40 years. There has been support for his work, but it has also faced obstacles. It directly challenges a foundation of linguistics that underlies contemporary ideas about culture. In this memoir, he tells the story of the discovery, and talks about the works created to explore its imagery and implications. He discusses his project's relationship to: prehistoric markings, contemporary philosophy, mathematics, and new research into the signs of language. His text and images present a fascinating perspective on the nature of language, in the context of the career of a unique artist.

About the Author :
Michael Winkler's visual/conceptual art has been exhibited in galleries and museums including: Kansas City Art Institute; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; The Aldrich Museums's Soho Center Gallery, New York; Kassel Art Museum, Germany, Academy of Fine Art, Poznan, Poland; Kaus Australis Foundation, Rotterdam; and Rosenwald Gallery, University of Pennsylvania (Retrospective of work from 1982-2004). Limited edition books and documentation of his ongoing project are archived in the Special Collections of prominent libraries and museums including: The New York Public Library, The Museum of Modern Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Smithsonian, Yale, Stanford, UCLA, University of Chicago, and University of Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in publications dealing with both art and experimental literary work. It was featured in the IMAGINING LANGUAGE Anthology (Ed: Rasula & McCaffery), MIT Press. Awards include Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

Review :
From Reviews of Michael Winkler's Art: "Word shapes: what we mean as what we see."-LIGHTWORKS "It's impossible not to try to read meaning into the shapes....With the plain lines, the shapes become dimensional; with the arrows, the letters become like forces in a subatomic particle chamber." -AFTERIMAGE "... many of the word images seem to look like their meaning; 'replicate, ' for instance, is fairly symmetrical, and 'axial' makes a neat 'x' right through the middle of the circle."-THE PRINT COLLECTORS NEWSLETTER "Michael Winkler's semiotic sentence paintings sparkle with a sentient specificity.... His way of representing words as spatial shapes is more than a little extraordinary." -PORTLAND PRESS HERALD