Jack Pierson BREAKING NEWS, 2021
The American artist Jack Pierson started experimenting with Word Pieces in the early 1990s, collecting salvaged letters from street signs which he then assembled as sculptural works. In Breaking News (2021), the journalistic phrase conveys a sense of urgency and of urban dynamism. The varied sizes, colours and styles of the lettering hint at the prior lives these objects have led, each containing its own narrative. Pierson’s Word Pieces can be considered an American variant on concrete poetry, in which narrative and language are rendered through the skilful combination of word and material. As he explains, ‘[when] I started making the Word Pieces in 1990, I had worked with words, I was a graphic designer, I was a teenage poet, I liked words, and I liked letter forms. My narrative is one of impulse, and editing.’
