A self-trained Philadelphia-based artist, dxg employs mixed media – primarily analogue text collage coupled with image transfer – to explore the relationship between “text” and “image” as they are brought to bear from the past upon the present. The primary sources for his text collages are fin-de-siecle children’s schoolbooks which, as one would expect, convey stereotypical (one might say propagandist) views of race and gender roles. The images, meanwhile, are sourced from photographers with whom dxg collaborates or from vintage Italian erotica.
As a given piece evolves, large portions of text and image are obscured – if not hidden altogether – by layered text, oil pastel, and period ephemera such as postage and ink stamps. In this manner, the works mirror and critique the process by which given ideas are “received” from the past.
