Artist Cecil Touchon

I look at Cecil Touchon’s work and feel like I’m seeing more clearly something that was always present in language: a certain claustrophobia. I think this applies to much of concrete poetry as well. There’s a need in our culture to find the recognizable letters, the meaning, the obvious context of words and to move fluidly to the next word without becoming “caught”. Also, to avoid confronting that terror that seems to plague all texts, that we or they will not “get it”. With concrete poetry we’re often pressed up against language and all of it’s parts. these collages contain that panic.