Liz Linden’s work explores a fundamental issue of semiotics- the necessary and productive failure of signifiers. Poet Robert Hass said that “a word is elegy to what it signifies,” and clearly art functions similarly. In essence, any representation can only ever aspire to and never actually attain the state of that which it indicates and it is into that area that Linden’s work delves.

In Doubles, some of the works are more self-conscious in their failures as signifiers than others. The text paintings, indicate moments happening in a world not limited to the written word, functioning as cheeky reminders of how unsatisfying words can be. The object-based work of essence clearly revolves around physical objects that, like language, are found in the world, cloaked in the context of banality that keeps them unexamined and under-noticed. Here the work attempts to re-examine these basic units of our lives, be they teacups, or light fixtures, or images of tragedy in wartime.

Ultimately, Linden’s work subtracts elements from the familiar so that it can disclose itself. These are everyday inversions, freeing a surprise.