First published in Artnews, November 1998, National Reviews section,p. 170.

Eduardo Kac at Aldo Castillo, Chicago

Garrett Holg

The work of Brazilian-born Eduardo Kac (pronounced Katz) is perhapsless familiar to gallery-goers than it is to surfers on the Internet, wherethe artist maintains a Web-site. An experimental poet, Kac uses computer,video, and even robotics to explore ways that technology affects meaning.

The audacious show "Language Works" a sampling of the artist'sproduction since 1990, featured a hologram, two videos, a set of Iris inkjetprints, and a computer terminal where visitors could operate six programs,including those dealing with animation and virtual reality. Not surprisingly,the exhibition also appeared on the Web (www.ekac.org/castillo.html).

In each work, Kac is less concerned with exact definition than suggestion.A trio of Iris prints from the 1994 "Erratum" series, for instance,consists of, barely discernible word pairs, like "mind/wind"and "knife/night." that are camouflaged amid layers of computer-generatedtexture and garish electronic color. There's also the "holopoem"Amalgam (1990), which literally liberates language from the printed pageby giving it sculptural form and projecting it into space and time. Asthe observer changes perspective while viewing this reflected-light hologram,the words "flower/void" turn into "vortex/flow." Withthe visual transitions -- letters seem to dissolve or become a jumble ofoverlapping shapes, fading in and out -- the artist intends for subtletransitions in meaning to occur.

More evocative are Kac's, digital computer works. In Insect Desperto(1995), English words rapidly blink on and off in various areas of a darkscreen, creating a staccato optical rhythm while a recording of someonespeaking Portuguese is heard. In Wine (1996), words written in a shakycursive on a pale red field appear and disappear, sometimes along the edgeof the screen--their hesitancy and indecisiveness implying inebriated attemptsat meaning that result in vague fleeting associations. It's here, at theedges of language art, and technology, that Kac's work deftly exploresword and image.

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