(link)
need to manifest text as an aesthetic physicality. At its worst generally involves fabrication budgets for neon, like how little distance we've come since Nauman.
3. We don't trust text alone in space - god forbid we come across as pedagogical, or worse boooring, or, worst, wrong - so we aestheticize it, ironize it, make it sparkle, cut it to a koan, so the lash of language is tempered with comfort, which are aesthetics. There seems no art text not couched in some.
(4. While wall text is, oddly, left to its own institutional devices.)
Despite, when Ford's are their most direct, cut and left dry, they retain all the enjoyment of flipping through artist notebooks. The aestheticization is more the provisionality, but it's a natural form.