David Merritt : Littera

Patten's interpretation of Merritt's two part exhibition - which consisted of one gallery with independent installations and another with interrelated works - focuses on material and temporal aspects of language, as well as tensions between the systematic ordering of culture and the fluidity of nature. Laing's elliptical analysis of the artist's work - drawings composed of small sticks pinned to the gallery wall - incorporates lengthy quotations of the following: Bataille (the body), Benjamin (trace), Debord (derive), de Certeau (walking the city), Derrida (metaphor) and Handke (threshold). Includes list of works. Biographical notes. 15 bibl. ref.