Tim Youd “Black/Red/Ribbon”

Cristin Tierney Gallery

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Cristin Tierney Gallery presents Tim Youd:

Black/Red/Ribbon, an exhibition of the artist’s new oil and typewriter ribbon paintings. This is the artist’s second show with the gallery and he will be present at the reception. Black/Red/Ribbon coincides with Cristin Tierney’s presentation of Youd’s performance work at The Armory Show in the Perspectives section, booth #303, March 5th through 8th.

As suggested by the exhibition title, Youd’s paintings are based on the typewriter ribbon, and draw from it as both an object and an idea. Formally, the paintings are hard-edged abstractions of rectangles within rectangles. They are comprised of used ribbons laid across the panel. Over this, Youd adds oil paint in hues of red, black, and blue to reference typewriter ribbons, and shades of peach, pink, and white to suggest the person typing on the machine. The nested rectangles echo the page of a book, the block of text inside the larger rectangle of the page. The typewriter ribbon doubles symbolically as a sentence, albeit an illegible one.

Conceptually, the paintings are linked to Youd’s decade-plus performance project 100 Novels, in which he retypes novels on the same make and model typewriter used by the author in a location related to the book. Youd considers these performances acts of devotional reading; in retyping the novels word for word, he is able to fully immerse himself in the world created by the author. His use of the ribbons—an essential piece of the typewriting experience—is a further exploration of the tools and identity of the novelist. Moreover, he creates his paintings like he retypes the books: one line at a time. The repetitive gestures required by both bodies of work result in a meditative practice for the artist, similar to the altered state achieved when lost in (or even when writing!) a good book.

To date, Youd (b. 1967, Worcester, MA) has retyped 65 novels in projects with CAM St. Louis, Vassar College, SCAD, New Orleans Museum of Art, MCASD, MOCA London, as well as others. His work has been reviewed by The New York Times, Artforum, Artnet News, Hyperallergic, The Village Voice, The Art Newspaper, Interview, and a variety of other national and international publications.