ASEMIC WRITING AND ALL THAT JAZZ: 10 DRAWINGS BY JEAN-PIERRE NADAU

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These particular drawings by Jean-Pierre Nadau contain a rhythm and reach that visually shifts, squirms and vibrates the longer the viewer spends time with them. They never repeat.  They dare us to create our own meanings for them and they do not dictate our reactions. They are a different body of work from his larger and denser big band and symphonic drawings, that, despite their size, never lose their intense intimacy.

The accepted description of asemic writing is writing that does not attempt to communicate any message other than its own nature as writing. For me, asemic writing is a non-sound reverberating in its own palace of meaning. It isn’t solipsistic because solopsism demands and hides cryptic meanings. Asemic empowers the word by liberating it from its need to be meaningful. In Nadau’s case at least there is the possibility of a temporary meaning as the glyph is born and materialized in the heat of his drawing it, but in the multiplicity of its fellow glyphs the brief meaning given during its inception disappears and it becomes a part or non-part of an asemic language, a visual music passage of nothing but possibilities.