Untitled (Life-Death)
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- Untitled (Life-Death)
- Bez tytułu (życia–śmierć)
- 1970
- typescript on paper
- 30 x 21 cm
The visual crossword poem "Life-Death" is a good example of the existential tendency in Dróżdż’s oeuvre. In this case, it does not use the strategy of the “direction to zero,” as in his very early work Forgetting or in his Numerical Texts, also from the 1970s, with their switch from letters and words directly to numbers—from 1 to 0. But even so, it could still be perceived as belonging to the same group of works. As mentioned by the artist, Life-Death arose by chance: he did not plan it, but rather simply noticed the coincidence of the possible crossword and developed that into a more complex and sophisticated form. The crossword poem consists of the two terms “życie” (life) and “śmierć” (death), repeated twice (vertically and horizontally) in a double-configuration that makes it thicker, resembling a small newspaper crossword while also playfully recalling the visual form of the Catholic cross. B.P.