Negative Space implies absence, the void surrounding the image-object at the center of a blank page. It’s an abstract representation of an impossible nowhere, a refusal of dimensionality and a backdrop of nothingness.
Los Angeles based artist Mungo Thomson attempts to capture and cage this elusive negation of space with a graphic scaffolding for the sake of alpha-numeric meaning. Relying heavily on the human tendency to pull coherent information out of visual patterns, Thomson’s type-set uses a grid structure to demarcate space, inviting the mind to fill-in-the-blanks. Some charachters, like the “#”, take on an optical vibration, while others like the “K” and the “X” have a gestault spatial effect, alternating between flat and 3d.
Thomson’s font was produced in conjunction with a recent exhibition at Gamec in Bergamo, Italy. For the exhibition Thomson literally interpreted the phrase ‘Negative Space’ by presenting a large scale installation of the photographic inversion of outter-space. The Negative Space font follows this logic in the form of a negative type.
Negative Space is the first of a new monthly series featuring an artist’s re-imagining of typography. Once per month we’ll have a free font downloadable right here. It’s part of Artists Space’s new WebCast: internet and computer based cultural content by artists around the world.
