These four new works by Alex Jones mark a further development of the artist’s secondary typeface, ACX, a glyph-based system that uses a sinistrodextral structure composed of interior horizontal and vertical forms. Working in a restricted monochromatic palette, Jones constructs each painting from a phrase of seven seven-letter words, arranged according to different syntactic structures.

The phrases themselves range from the poetic and philosophical to the distinctly mundane. Their literal meanings, however, are deliberately secondary to the formal relationships created between them. Words are treated less as a means of communication than as material: repeated, positioned and balanced within the fixed structure of the ACX system.

This shift from language to form creates an ambiguity within the works. They retain the visual authority and familiarity of written language while resisting straightforward reading. Meaning is present but unstable, becoming one element among rhythm, proportion, repetition and composition. As Jones describes it, the works seek an equilibrium in which “the meaning of words becomes less important and that they are more a building material.”

These four paintings can therefore be read both as language and as abstraction. Their phrases may suggest something profound, political or absurd, but ultimately the words are allowed to operate independently of what they appear to say. As Jones says, “It’s not about what words say, it’s about how they sit.”