No, not speech balloons in the comics, with quoted speech inside them (though those are of considerable interest), but quotations made up of inflated balloons mounted on a vertical surface (in a form of performance art), which are then photographed, to yield the enduring art works: balloon-quote photography. The artist is Michael James Schneider, using the name blcksmth. His recent work Hustle Memory:
(#1)
(Hat tip to Sandy Littletree, who pointed me to Schneider when the image in #1 appeared without attribution on FB on 4/27.)
Two more of these. On being gay/queer, on his website on 3/23/19:
(#2)
And a self-defeating meta-reflection on his art, on his website on 10/4/19:
(#3)
Schneider’s characteristically self-deprecating thumbnail description of himself:
Michael James Schneider is a writer and artist living in Portland, Oregon. He takes a lot of pictures of himself falling down.
He’s a tremendously prolific artist and writer, turning out fiction, frequent self-deprecating diaristic postings on his romantic and sexual life, and a huge range of photography besides the balloon quotations, for instance this wry play on red flag:
(#4)
Background notes. There’s a Page on this blog with links to postings about speech balloons.
Then postings on this blog on the issue in #3 above:
— on 12/5/10 in “But is it art?”: about Dinosaur Comics, with references to the captioning of found images, Duchamp, Holzer, and Ruscha
— on 5/4/11 in “Ed Ruscha”
— on 5/8/11 in “More conceptual art”: Glen Ligon, Jenny Holzer
— on 11/13/15 in “The art of interjection”: Deborah Kass sculpture; Ed Ruscha word paintings
— on 6/19/16 in “Language at the art galleries”: Ed Ruscha, Jean-Michel Basquiat
— plus ecards and other texty creations; see the Page on this blog on ecards and their texty kin (which blcksmth’s balloon quotations are closely related to)
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