Beautiful Words – comprises a series of six neon text sculptures installed to form 9m long line, each individual section spelling out the message “Beautiful Words” in both a different colour and a different type design. Exploring the dynamic between repetition and difference, this new work both performs its own linguistic content – words, made and displayed beautifully – whilst at the same time spiralling the viewer to questions about beauty in relation to letter-forms, colours and language itself. Beautiful Words has been made, and is first presented at Renata Fabbri in Milan, as part of the two person show Same River Twice which frames Etchells’s neon work alongside new drawings and sculptural pieces by Vlatka Horvat.

About Tim Etchells’ neon and LED works
Etchells’ neon and LED pieces often draw on his broader fascinations as an artist, writer and performance maker, exploring contradictory aspects of language – the speed, clarity and vividness with which it communicates narrative, image and ideas, and at the same time its amazing propensity to create a rich field of uncertainty and ambiguity.

Through simple phrases spelt out in neon, LED and other media, Etchells strives to create miniature narratives, moments of confusion, awkwardness, reflection and intimacy in public and gallery settings. Encountering the neon sign works, in the streets of a city or in the space of a white cube gallery, the viewer becomes implicated in a situation that’s not fully revealed, or a linguistic formulation that generates confusion or ambiguity. As often in Etchells’ work, in the neons the missing parts of the picture are as important as the elements that are present. Invoking a story, or projecting an idea out-of-context, the work invites us in, but into what exactly we can’t be sure.