Natalie Czech’s new group of works is entitled to icon, or how something becomes an icon. She focuses her attention on everyday pictograms, shorthand symbols used in visual communication that inhabit a realm between image and text. “Czech makes compilations of the conceptual areas that an icon covers and stages this semantic field in a photograph. To do this, she takes pictures of items of clothing and accessories using tropes from fashion and product photography, reading the form of an icon into the contours, folds, or seams of the objects and applying them directly to the photo. As the meaning and usage of an icon vary in digital applications, the artist adds a kind of product label to the objects she photographs, as is standard practice with marketed goods: ‘Draw / Drafts / Draft Reviews / Write a Review / Update Info / Edit / Text // Wrong?’” (Jens Asthoff). In this way, Czech uncovers a digital form of everyday poetry and combines it with conceptual object photography.

Natalie Czech, b. 1976 in Neuss, is an artist whose work straddles the worlds of concrete poetry and conceptual photography.