Description

Rachel Lord. "Palimpsest". 30 x 18 inches. Signed edition of 50. $250. Look out for two of Rachel Lord's documental paintings in the New Museum Triennial co-curated by Ryan Trecartin and Lauren Cornell opening today. In Palimpsest, Lord explores the global etymology of empire through definition of 'other' utilizing the idiom, "it's Greek to me", made famous by Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Employing the metaphor of an ancient manuscript which has been scraped or washed for reuse, she creates a cycle of babble by flattening four languages and their reference for Greek as 'other': Latin, English, Mandarin, and modern Greek. Lord playfully considers the palimpsest as the ultimate document, "like an old form of the internet with everything on top of each other". Layering flat painted text so that it is nearly undecipherable, the artist presents a tapestry of language as a way of talking about language.