November 17, 2017–April 15, 2018
This exhibition presents a focused selection of objects drawn from a cache of more than 400 works that PAMM recently acquired from the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry—a world-renowned, Miami-based private collection that centers on the merger of word and image. Featuring works by 21 individuals—including Carl Andre, Henri Chopin, Dom Sylvester Houédard, d. a. levy, Françoise Mairey, and Thomas Merton—the exhibition explores how artists and poets have transformed the typewriter, a machine associated with mundane office work, into an instrument capable of generating dazzling optical effects and poignant poetic expressions. Harnessing the typewriter’s inherent precision while defying its physical limitations, the works on view display a wide array of visual and conceptual approaches, from experiments with figuration to novel forms of geometric abstraction. While several works in the exhibition employ grids, mathematical patterns, and other rational systems, many also revolve around mystical, pseudo-spiritual subject matter.
PAMM’s acquisition from the Sackner Archive consists of a combined gift and purchase made possible by the generosity of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Ruth and Marvin A. Sackner, and the Sackner Family Partnership. The entire acquisition encompasses a broad range of language-based genres and subcategories, from mail art, performance poetry, artist books, and experimental calligraphy to rare publications by artists associated with Dada, Surrealism, Futurism, and other important early 20th-century movements.
From the truer world of the other: Typewriter Art from PAMM’s Collection is organized by PAMM Curator René Morales and PAMM Assistant Curator Jennifer Inacio. This exhibition is supported by TRA Publishing.
