Antonyms

The Antonyms series continues an interest in paradox and ‘mutually exclusive dualities’. Each print is a digital hybrid of two antonymous or mutually exclusive words: an embodied paradox designed to give typographic form to a linguistic impossibility.

 

R. H. Blythe:

‘In any case, what we desire is not so much a warm universe, nor even a

whole, undivided one; what a man wants, is what he is offered, not the

single absolute, not the single relative, but the single two-in-one. Zen is when

he takes what he is offered and knows what he really wanted, which is, if the

printer can manage it, the ’(relativeabsolute) 1960

 

Dom Sylvester Houédard:

‘Levi-Strauss I find particularly persuasive when he sees myths as establishing mutually exclusive dualities & then creating links & hybrids and magic bridges & jacobs-ladders between them – ie pontificating (in its root sense) & helping the up-and-down traffic of

angels’1972

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. 1936

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The words are first set in my own typeface P22Dichromate, then digitally rendered into isometric projection. An unpredictable process of digital interpolation is then used to create ‘morphed’ hybrids of the two opposing words.

The resulting central line is the synthesis (or resolution)  of two mutually exclusive terms. The antonym pairs include above/below, accept/reject, ignorance/knowledge, relative/absolute and positive/negative.