Local Project presentes autosemblematic, which examines the current state of visual language by exploring the way nine contemporary artists deconstruct its various structural units using images and references from mainstream popular culture.

Marcy Brafman, Sally Curcio, Gabert Farrar, Michael Greathouse, Osman Khan, Scott Kiernan, Margaret Lanzetta, Renzo Ortega and Alexander Reyna.

Visual language, and subsequent visual vocabulary, can be defined as a system of communication using visual elements or structural units that include line, shape, color, form, motion, texture, pattern, direction, orientation, scale, angle, space and proportion. Typically, the elements in an image represent concepts in a spatial context, rather than the linear form used for words. Within this framework, the title autosemblematic, a cross between the words automatic, semblance and emblem, acts as a fictional tool, or set of criterion, in which the artworks are deconstructed in the context of this exhibition. Automatic refers to an instinctive or unconscious response that we have to visual stimuli. Semblance refers to each artists’ use of a defined visual vocabulary to create the appearance or impression of that vocabulary within the artwork that is something other than what it is creating the impression of. Emblem refers to the idea that each of the artworks on view act as symbols of a larger whole. autosemblematic is curated by Jennifer Junkermeier.