I (Heart) You

Tim Noble and Sue Webster's electric sculpture, I Heart You, mines a British sweet spot for American vernacular culture in true Pop art fashion, as it celebrates both the spectacular and mundane. Noble and Webster have re-envisioned their own universal, large-scale pulsating marquee, the visual excess of the work flaunts the British duo's knack for graphic communication and technical sophistication. As a cultural nod to Vegas signage, the electrified logo beckons the viewer with the warmth of its sweet and romantic textual simplicity while simultaneously remaining cool, electronic, and dry. Disputes between the head and heart are perhaps increasingly commodified in today's world, whereby the symbol of the heart becomes a synonymous logo for the concept of love. Formally, the square composition of I Heart You recalls Robert Indiana's Love series and conceptually, their interest in the nature of communication echoes the work of Bruce Nauman.

"Noble and Webster's art can be watched like a performance, contemplated like a painting, engaged spatially like a sculpture, participated in like a happening, or absorbed in a way a person encounters an instant visual assault from a garish nightclub sign" (J. Deitch, "Black Magic," Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Wasted Youth, Rizzoli 2006).