The use of text as an expressive medium in contemporary art

Text as an expressive medium plays an important role in contemporary art. From the artistic manifestos and theoretical works written by avant-garde artists to the emergence of modern pieces where text becomes an independent expressive material, the aim of this article is to identify the main creative strategies of contemporary artists working with text, both in terms of creative gesture. The relevance of the topic lies in the fact that text was not an independent form of expression for artists in the 20th century. Its main task initially was to substantiate the activities of movements through manifestation. Today, we can observe a return to text as an indispensable element of contemporary artworks. Additionally, the revived interest in zine culture and other printed materials indicates that this area requires analysis and systematization. The methodology is based on a formal description method and comparative analysis, as the material being studied pertains to recent times. The main findings of the article highlight two fundamental strategies employed by artists in this field: text as an object and text as ephemerality. Within these strategies, the author of the article identifies works by artists who are currently actively developing their practices. This allows for tracing the dynamics in terms of the relevance of text usage in contemporary art. Thus, both more "classical" works, where artists engage with the interpretation of the alphabet or the image of a book, and the latest art forms such as the art & science direction, where text can be interpreted as a product of machine creativity, are distinguished. This enables the use of philosophical categories such as "atmosphere" and "auto-curatorship," introduced into discourse in the 1990s and 2010s, for analysis.