"PhotoAsemic LandScapes" TLP Debut + Stamps & More by Borderline Grafix (Austin, Texas, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Cover of PhotoAsemic LandScapes by IUOMA member Borderline Grafix (Austin, Texas, USA)

October 3, 2014 - Borderline Grafix - perhaps best known at the IUOMA as President of DKult Texas (DKULTX) - sent me a package bursting with art, news and even a bit of history. I will take three blogs to share all the interesting material.

First, I am thrilled to share excerpts from a 12-page chapbook (aka TLP or even a zine) by Borderline Grafix titled PhotoAsemic LandScapes:

Borderline Grafix chooses photography as the medium for presenting asemics, and nature provides the source for symbols, syntax and structures that suggest language. During the big collaborative asemic book projects circa 2011-12, we coined the terms “eco-asemics” to describe artists who found their inspiration in the natural world. John M. Bennett (USA) was one notable eco-ascemicist during that time, and the idea captured the imagination of the late Guido Vermeulen (Belgium) who made many important and innovative contributions.

Above are two excellent, representative pages from PhotoAsemic Landscapes. Borderline Grafix applies a keen eye for images and has enhanced/altered the photos to give them a textual quality. Trees, in particular, appear frequently in the book providing both linearity suggesting language as well as complex organic formations that look like cursive writing.

While clearly representational, distortion and other devices bring the images to near abstraction, I think, revealing a perspective on the nature of representation and blurring distinctions between image and text. Much eco-asemic work I have seen employs documentary nature depiction, such as close studies of wood grain, for instance. Borderline Grafix is distinctive in terms of the degree of image manipulation.

Above is the back cover of PhotoAsemic Landscapes by Borderline Grafix. Some critics (I call them the asemically correct) question whether found materials, including natural materials displayed in various ways as eco-asemic, have true validity as asemic writing. They insist asemic writing can only be symbols made on a page by a human being and conforming to a narrow definition. By providing a context, Borderline Grafix invites us to see the work in the book as asemic and consider the possibilities where, ordinarily, we might not look. I believe the result is highly success; and as I revisit the book, I find more and more of interest and meditate more and more on the primal relationship of nature to language.

Borderline Grafix is also a master stamp maker and included this compelling sheet in the package:

The x-ray stamps continues the perceptual theme established in PhotoAsemic LandScapes: The artist asks us to look deeply into and below the surface of commonplace things. The envelope is a masterpiece as well:

It’s almost as big as Texas and had to be scanned in two parts:

Stay tuned for more work by Borderline Grafix in the days ahead!  I offer deepest thanks to Borderline Grafix for sending this wonderful work, and I hope others enjoy it as well.

[Rebecca Guyver]

And those stamps! Ah ah. I love my maritime stamps but these say automated writing to me and so much more!  FAB!

[Rebecca Guyver]

That is fabulous stuff!  I learned a new word too.  What a great word! Is the zine/chapbook a one-pff or are their multiple copies?  How big is it?  Did Guido get one? 

THANKS for sharing this!  As ever you commentary is wonderful too, DVS.