Joseph Grigely: Conversations 1994 – 2016

Gandy gallery announces the third solo exhibition by Joseph Grigely at the gallery, the first in Slovakia of the work by the artist. The exhibition involves a return to the roots for this American-born artist whose grandparents left the Hungary region for the U.S. soon after World War One.

In the mid 1990s, Grigely started to show what he called his Conversations with the Hearing, whose material is directly germane to his deafness. These works consist of scraps of paper (metro cards, invitations, stationary, tablecloths, napkins, business cards, etc.) that were written upon by people who do not know sign language. All these Conversations produce a singular aesthetic, a refined economy of information. Like the conversation notebooks used by Beethoven’s speakers after the composer lost his hearing, they offer the possibility for an archeology of discussions while providing a fiction narrative of daily life.
This unique survey of his dialogic oeuvre features works from the 1990s to the present day, from installation to photography including publications and videos. The exhibition reveals the wide range of his creativity that extends far beyond deafness to explore the limits of language as well as questioning the representations of language in the history of art.