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Troy Passey is an interdisciplinary artist who merges idea with image in his text-based art. He creates conceptual pieces through playful, elemental compositions that utilize words as a visual–in addition to a written–language. In these works, words operate in many ways; some words or phrases become figurative, emerging as horizon lines or objects themselves, while others whimsically name, or intuitively explain and narrate the objects drawn by Passey. He considers the titles of his works the key texts to be read, crediting writers ranging from Emily Dickinson to Leonard Cohen, from Rainer Maria Rilke to Robert Frost, to The Cure.
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Tory Passey grew up on a farm outside of Paris, Idaho, an avid reader never without a pen or paper in his pocket. In these early years, he religiously jotted down quotes and ideas, ever-gathering what would later become his principal medium. While studying English in college, Passey also delved into art history and, when writing his master’s thesis on Andy Warhol, he came across words by Warhol which shifted the course of his career. “He said, ‘People are often better at their second love than they are at their first love because you’re way too close to your first love, but with your second love, you have some distance.’ So, I changed my paradigm and called myself an artist.” His childhood habit of collecting words, and his appreciation of poetry and prose, unintentionally had been preparation for what would become his life’s work.
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Although most often based on the scholarship of past writers, Passey’s works are as physical and emotional as they are cerebral. A self-proclaimed “anti-calligrapher”, Passey does not expect viewers to read the entirety of words he uses to build his works (which are often repetitions marked with an intensity that approaches asemic writing); rather, he hopes the words and compositions, as a whole, speak to people on an intuitive, elemental level. His scrawled words are contingent parts of works that are best summed up by their titles.
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TAKE THIS LONGING: TROY PASSEY
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