Joseph Kosuth with his piece ‘One and Three Chairs’ has a very clear use of semiotics. He has a photograph of a chair next to a real chair next to a dictionary definition of a chair. They all mean chair but he has used different signifiers to express that. This piece of artwork poses questions such as, how is the photograph and the words different from the real chair if they all describe the chair?
Gillian Wearing with her piece ‘I’m Desperate’ shows a man who has revealed his private thoughts by writing it on the card. Wearing has a collection of photographs that show signs from the members of public in a collection called signs that say what you want them to say and not what someone else wants you to say.
The words make you read the image of the man in a certain way as he has signified that he is ‘desperate’. If the sign had read ‘I’m ecstatic’ it would make you see the man in a totally different way. It shows that images are quite feeble compared to words because an image can totally change in meaning if they have words against them.
aimeehooley 