Jürg Lehni
Flood Fill – Verbs

Jürg Lehni uses the Flood Fill algorithm that he already modified and further developed for his 2003 work Flood Fill – Global Warning to visualize verbs from Richard Serra’s Verb List of 1967-68. On two pieces of paper, which are now part of the collection of MoMA in New York, Serra listed 84 verbs and 24 contexts in which the verbs could be found. Based on his famous slogan “Drawing is a verb”, Serra saw the list as a stock of actions related to oneself and to the material, location and process of art.

The FF Offline font that Lehni employed here is already influenced by its favored use by the American conceptual artist Laurence Weiner for his books and installations. In a “software that produces a self-generating and always-varying animation sequence every time it runs”, as the artist puts it, verbs like TWIST, MIX, DIG or SPILL are projected onto a screen placed in the corner. While Lehni’s Global Warning was about the digital drawing of hand-written contents, here the concept of digital drawing itself is explored. The result is not drawings, as in Global Warning, but different ways of referring to drawing.  

(Text: Bettina Back)