Atelier de la Mécanique

Over the past five years, Shannon Ebner has mined the porous territory of language by photographing words and letters of her own construction in environments that range from the Los Angeles landscape to the space of the artist’s studio. The works selected for Arles are largely drawn from Ebner’s first artist’s book The Sun as Error as well as her two most recent solo exhibitions—Invisible Language Workshop and Signal Hill. This expansive collection of images is a continuation of Ebner’s investigation of the linguistic and material potential of the photograph, moving away from photographing specific words and phrases, and towards the construction of a more mercurial visual system. In a broad sense, Ebner’s work can be seen as an ongoing exploration of the indexical properties of language and photography, and the terrain where word and image slip between recognition and illegibility.