Author Description

Accretions of the word: clichés, idioms and colloquialisms as drawing This volume presents two recent drawing series by Roni Horn (born 1955), Wits' End Sampler (2018) and Wits' End Mash (2019). Both series use the same source material, handwritten clichés, idioms and colloquialisms authored by approximately 300 individuals. Clichés and idioms are treated here as icons of language. One by one, clichés are silkscreened onto walls ("Sampler") or paper ("Mash"). Phrases build up, the layering simultaneously revealing and obscuring meaning. Wits' End is the seventh edition in this series of books, following bird (2008), aka (2010), Hack Wit (2015), Th Rose Prblm (2016), The Selected Gifts (1974-2015) (2016) and Dogs' Chorus (2019), all published by Steidl.