Asemic calligraphy by Tucker Sampson

Asemic visual poetry by Tucker Sampson (Concord, New Hampshire, USA)

I have been following Tucker Sampson's visual poetry for some time primarily in Michael Jacobson's asemic group & Nico Vassilakis's visual poetry group, both on Facebook. The appearance of Tucker Sampson's work on Asemic Front 2 is long overdue. I am thrilled to be able to showcase these outstanding pieces of asemic calligraphy as an introduction. 

Tucker Sampson is a visual poet whose work is essentially "language-centered" or rooted in written text (as opposed to visual images). He is among the visual poets today whom I have called post-Lettrist due to his close study of relationships among individual letters (and fonts) beneath the coherence of individual words. 

Thus Sampson achieves a Brechtian alienation of meaning. We are provided an experience of symbols - individual letters or letter fragments - deprived of meaning even on the minimal level of single words. He focuses on the near-mystical area of symbol generation, where a shape is endowed with meaning & becomes part of a larger form. Or, more important, on shapes that elude (or defy) coherence & signify nothing. This often involves a deconstructive process.

Thus Tucker Sampson's work invokes the concept of the meaningless or the unintelligible even before it enters the realm of the asemic proper.  

These calligraphic pieces shown here at Asemic Front 2 are unquestionably asemic & are a testimony to Sampson's ability to navigate complex, contradictory, paradoxical & non-rational precincts of discourse. His great talent, I believe, is to be able to bring us with him. I look forward to sharing more of his work on AF2.

- De Villo Sloan

By Tucker Sampson (Concord, New Hampshire, USA)

By Tucker Sampson (Concord, New Hampshire, USA)